Jumanji takes advantage of lull
LOS ANGELES — Demonstrating the continued drawing power of Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle fended off a pair of male-skewing, actionoriented newcomers — 12 Strong and Den of Thieves — to top the box office for a third straight week.
On a quiet weekend in what is considered a kind of postholiday box-office doldrums, the family-friendly Jumanji pulled in $19.5 million, boosted by the lack of competition from other major films. With a cumulative domestic haul of $316 million, the film surpassed the 2012 James Bond film Skyfall to become Columbia Pictures’ fifth highest-grossing movie of all time.
Highlighting the box-office potency of what the film industry broadly considers flyover country, 12 Strong — the real-life story of a U.S. special forces team sent to Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, based on the best-selling book Horse Soldiers — came in second with about $16 million.
The Alcon Entertainment and Warner Bros. release, which stars Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon, Michael Pena and Trevante Rhodes, resonated particularly with older moviegoers, with nearly 80 percent of the audience over the age of 25. Though reviews were decidedly mixed, the film received an A CinemaScore from moviegoers.
Coming in third — and also skewing toward an older, male audience — STX Entertainment’s action-thriller Den of Thieves earned $15.2 million, a surprisingly robust showing for the critically lambasted, Gerard Butler-starring movie about a group of cops trying to stop a bank heist.
In its second weekend in wide release, director Steven Spielberg’s Pentagon Papers drama The Post landed in fourth place, pulling in about $12 million. With the combined appeal of stars Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks — and against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s ongoing war against the mainstream press — 20th Century Fox is hoping the film, which has earned more than $45 million to date, will hold strongly in the coming weeks.
Rounding out the top five with about $11 million in grosses, Hugh Jackman’s P.T. Barnum musical The Greatest Showman continued to show surprisingly strong legs. Since its rather underwhelming opening over the holidays, the film has gone on to gross more than $113 million domestically and over $231 million worldwide.
The weekend’s other newcomer, Roadside Attractions and Liddell Entertainment’s modestly budgeted, countrymusic-inflected romance Forever My Girl, debuted in 10th place with a better-thanexpected $4.2 million.
Skating into nearly 800 theaters, the Tonya Harding dramedy I, Tonya took in about $3 million, while the high-stakes-poker drama Molly’s Game earned $1.6 million and the critically acclaimed coming-of-age film Call Me by Your Name pulled in $1.5 million.
Meanwhile, the juggernaut that is Star Wars: Episode VIII — The Last Jedi continued to roll on. Bringing in $6.5 million in its sixth weekend in release, the film became the sixth movie ever to cross the $600 million mark at the domestic box office and has now earned a massive $1.3 billion globally.