‘Alita’ on top in slow film weekend
How do you judge the performance of a very expensive cyborg?
On one hand, Fox’s “Alita: Battle Angel,” an effects-laden, dystopian, scifi action movie with a bionic heroine, easily topped this weekend’s domestic box office. It exceeded most analysts’ expectations by bringing in about $27.8 million in the lead-up to Presidents Day.
On the other hand, that amount is modest next to the roughly $170 million it took make the movie, produced in part by James Cameron and based on a manga series by Yukito Kishiro. A digitally augmented Rosa Salazar leads a cast that also includes Christoph Waltz and Mahershala Ali.
Another expensive sci-fi movie, “Mortal Engines,” was one of the biggest flops of 2018, opening in December to about $7.5 million domestically against a budget of around $100 million.
Fox initially planned to release “Alita” in December, when it would have gone up against a tangle of holiday crowd-pleasers. The studio’s decision to push the release to February seems to have helped Cameron to avoid, at least, a “Mortal Engines”-like disaster.
Second place at the box office was Warner Bros.’ “The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part.” This sequel about toy-brick people, voiced by Chris Pratt and Elizabeth Banks, brought in about $21.2 million during its second weekend in theaters, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data.
Warner Bros. also took third place with “Isn’t it Romantic,” a comedy that opened with about $14.2 million in ticket sales this weekend. The movie, both a romantic comedy and a commentary on romantic comedies, stars Rebel Wilson and Liam Hemsworth.
Meta commentary is also at play in the other newcomer to crack the top five, Universal’s “Happy Death Day 2U,” which made around $9.8 million in its first weekend, landing in fifth place. It is a self-parodying sequel to the 2017 slasher “Happy Death Day.”
Overall, the weekend failed to invigorate what has so far been a lackluster year at the box office. Presidents Day weekend of last year saw the release of the record-shattering “Black Panther.”