Ready Player One at top of game
LOS ANGELES — Although Universal’s Pacific Rim: Uprising toppled Disney’s Black Panther from the top spot two weeks ago, last weekend, the blockbuster dropped several spots, only to be replaced by a new one, Warner Bros.’ Ready Player One.
The Steven Spielbergdirected film, which opened March 29, grossed about $53.7 million through Sunday.
Based on the best-selling 2011 Ernest Cline book, Ready Player One is a dystopian scifi epic armed with the genre’s requisite futuristic tech and plenty of ’80s nostalgia. The film cost between $150 million and $175 million to produce, which means it went into this weekend needing strong foreign ticket sales — something it got with $128 million at the overseas box office.
Coming in second was Tyler Perry’s Acrimony, which opened with about $17.2 million.
Distributed by Lionsgate, the R-rated thriller stars Taraji P. Henson as a woman who goes to extreme lengths after her husband betrays her. It earned mixed reviews from audiences and critics with an A-minus rating on CinemaScore and a 24 percent rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
With Tyler Perry as a film’s creator, “it’s always bankable,” said senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “This film is quite different from the Madea films, but it’s really a testament to the enduring power of Perry’s stamp on content.”
Black Panther came in third, adding $11.5 million in its seventh weekend for about $651 million. With its $623 million at the overseas box office, it has reached $1.27 billion in worldwide sales.
In fourth place, Roadside Attractions’ faith-based I Can Only Imagine, now in its third week, added $10.4 million to its ticket sales (as well as 395 locations) for a cumulative domestic gross of $55 million.
Rounding out the top five, Universal’s Pacific Rim: Uprising dropped four spots after its No. 1 debut last week and brought in about $9.4 million for a cumulative domestic gross of about $46 million.
“By having these two epic-scale action sci-fi movies back to back, I think it was predestined or preordained that Pacific Rim in its second weekend, coming up against Ready Player One, would probably have a fairly significant drop,” Dergarabedian said. “But the lion’s share of the box office for Pacific Rim has been earned and is being earned in the international marketplace, where it’s still doing big business.”
Also new this weekend, Pure Flix’s faith-based sequel God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness debuted at No. 12 with about $2.7 million.
The third movie in the God’s Not Dead series, A Light in Darkness came in under analysts’ expectations of $5 million. The picture earned mixed reviews from audiences and critics with an A-minus rating on CinemaScore and a 15 percent rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
A third faith-based film, Affirm Films’ Paul, Apostle of Christ, took the No. 10 spot last weekend, with an additional $3.5 million in sales, for a cumulative $11.5 million.
At No. 11, Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs, in limited release, expanded into 138 additional theaters (for a total of 165) and brought in about $2.9 million over the weekend, with a total of about $6 million.