‘Hitman’ stays on top box-office

LOS ANGELES: Hampered by a hurricane and a high-profile boxing match, weekend box-office results in North America were the slowest in nearly 16 years, allowing previous leader ‘The Hitman's Bodyguard' to hold its top spot with an unimpressive US$10.1 million take.

Harvey, the deadly hurricaneturned-tropical storm, led to some theatre closings in Texas, while Floyd Mayweather's much-hyped bout against Irishman Conor McGregor proved to be one of the biggest pay-per-view shows in history, Variety.com noted.

That left the overall weekend box office around US$65 million, its lowest since a weekend shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

“This,” as website boxofficemojo. com summed it up, “was a miserable weekend.”

‘Hitman', an action comedy from Lionsgate, saw its estimated three-day take drop by about half from its US$21.4 million opening a week earlier, industry website Exhibitor Relations reported.

In second place for the weekend was Warner Bros.' horror flick ‘Annabelle: Creation', part of the popular ‘Conjuring' franchise. The film took in US$7.4 million, adding to its worldwide gross of more than US$1 billion.

Next was ‘Leap', a new release from Weinstein Co., at US$5 million -- a remarkably small take for a third-place film.

Fourth place went to ‘Wind River', another Weinstein production, at US$4.4 million, improving on its 10th-place finish last week.

Bleecker Street's ‘Logan Lucky', Steven Soderbergh's first film since his self-proclaimed retirement four years ago, also took in US$4.4 million. Rounding out the top 10 were: 'Dunkirk' (US$4 million) 'Spider-Man: Homecoming' (US$2.7 million)

'Birth of the Dragon' (US$2.5 million)

'The Emoji Movie' (US$2.4 million)

'Girls Trip' (US$2.3 million)— AFP