John Wick takes down Avengers as box office champ
The box office has a new king, and his name is John Wick. The third installment of the hyperviolent Keanu Reeves franchise has taken the top spot at the North American box office and ended the three-week reign of “Avengers: Endgame.”
“John Wick: Chapter
3 — Parabellum” grossed $56.8 million in its opening weekend. Not only did it far exceed expectations, it’s a franchise best that nearly doubled the opening of the second film, which itself doubled the opening of the first film from 2014.
The audience, in other words, is growing exponentially for this series about a talented assassin who never seems to get a
break. This time, there’s a $14 million price tag on his head.
Men made up the bulk (63 percent) of the “John Wick 3” opening-weekend crowd. Overall audiences gave the film a rare A-plus Cinemascore, indicating that word of mouth will be strong in subsequent weekends.
“Avengers: Endgame” slid to second place in its fourth weekend, with $30 million. Domestically, where the film has grossed $771.4 million, it’s now second only to “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” ($937 million) and globally, with $2.6 billion, it’s still second to “Avatar”
($2.8 billion).
In its second weekend, “Pokemon Detective Pikachu” also continued to do well, placing third with $25.1 million. But with the high-performing trifecta of John Wick, the Avengers and Pikachu, there weren’t many moviegoers left over for the less flashy newcomers such as “A Dog’s Journey” and “The Sun Is Also a Star.”
Amblin Entertainment and Reliance Entertainment’s “A Dog’s Journey” opened in fourth with an underwhelming $8 million. The Universaldistributed film is a sequel to the 2017 hit “A Dog’s Purpose.” But the audience for this sequel was less than half of that for the first, which opened to $18.2 million. But audiences who did turn out gave it an A Cinemascore, which could point toward long-term playability.
Most disappointing, however, was the youngadult adaptation “The Sun Is Also a Star,” which grossed $2.5 million from more than 2,000 screens and landed in eighth place. Although modestly budgeted at a reported $9 million, and featuring popular television actors such as “Riverdale’s” Charles Melton and “Grown-ish’s” Yara Shahidi, the Warner Bros.-released film failed to connect even with the audiences who turned out. It got a poor B-plus Cinemascore.