Jumanji keeping The Post at bay
NEW YORK — Meryl Streep, Liam Neeson, Taraji P. Henson and Paddington Bear and all rushed into movie theaters over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, but Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle still roared the loudest with an estimated $35.1 million in ticket sales, Friday through Tuesday.
Coming closest was Steven Spielberg’s Pentagon Papers drama The Post, starring Streep as Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham and Tom Hanks as editor Ben Bradlee. Twentieth Century Fox is forecasting $18.6 million for the weekend and $23 million for the four-day holiday.
It’s a solid result for The Post in its nationwide expansion following several weeks of limited release. Made for about $50 million and fasttracked after the election of President Donald Trump, The Post is considered by many a timely commentary on the power of the press, and a rebuke of Trump from some of Hollywood’s biggest names.
In third place was The Greatest Showman. Hugh Jackman’s portrayal of P.T. Barnum pocketed about $16 million in its fourth week of release. With strong word of mouth, the 20th Century Foxdistributed movie has taken in about $99 million.
Landing in fourth was the Neeson thriller The Commuter, a Lionsgate release in partnership with Studiocanal. The modest $16 million opening for the film — Neeson’s fourth with director Jaume Collet-Serra (Non-Stop, Unknown, Run All Night) — suggested some of the thrill of Neeson’s action-movie period, kicked off 10 years ago with the $145 million hit Taken, may be waning.
The children’s book adaptation sequel Paddington 2 opened with $15 million. The film, originally to be distributed in North America over the Christmas holiday by The Weinstein Co., was sold to Warner Bros. after any association with the disgraced Weinstein Co. cochairman Harvey Weinstein was deemed toxic for the film.
The juggled rollout of the movie — plus the breakout success of Jumanji as the goto family film — may have hurt Paddington 2. Despite rave reviews, it did about half the $19 million debut of its 2015 predecessor.
The R-rated Proud Mary, starring Henson as a hit woman, followed close behind with $11.7 million. Though some accused Sony’s Screen Gems of burying the film (it didn’t screen for critics), the movie drew poor reviews and even criticism from John Fogerty, who accused the film of exploiting the title to his Creedence Clearwater Revival classic.
The plethora of releases, along with a host of awards contenders in limited release (led by Darkest Hour, with $5.4 million following Gary Oldman’s Golden Globe win for best actor) pushed the weekend box office to about $190 million for the four-day holiday frame, according to Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for comScore. Albeit shy of the 2015 record MLK weekend when Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper opened, it’s a strong start for Hollywood’s 2018 after an upand-down 2017.
Most surprising, though, is that the holiday season holdover powering the January box office isn’t Star Wars: Episode VIII — The Last Jedi but Jumanji. The reboot, starring Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart and Jack Black, has now been the no. 1 film two weeks running after spending its initial two weeks of release trailing The Last Jedi.