"Movie Stars" aren't seen as being quite as valuable in Hollywood today as they did a few decades ago, as while there is a special excitement in seeing talented and famous performers up on the big screen, the much more significant draw to theaters these days is established and popular intellectual property. This weekend, however, audiences got to have a splash of both as one of the biggest actors in the world, Tom Holland, arrived in cinemas around the globe as the lead in Ruben Fleischer's Uncharted – a blockbuster based on the hit video game.
The result, as you can see in the chart below, is a massive hit, as the new film blew past expectations in its domestic debut. Check out the full Top 10, and join me after for analysis!
Uncharted Far Exceeds Expectations As It Has A Terrific Opening Weekend
Uncharted is the first big screen action adventure film we've seen in 2022, and the first we've seen since Jon Watts' Spider-Man: No Way Home (also starring Tom Holland), and the numbers suggest that audiences were very eager to have some high-flying fun at their local cineplex. According to Deadline, Sony was only expecting the video game movie to make $27 million in its first three days, with an additional three million or so added from tomorrow's President's Day holiday, but the studio's estimates have been proven far too conservative.
According to The Numbers, Uncharted has had the best opening weekend of the year thus far, crushing both Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett's Scream (which made $30 million when it debuted in mid-January) and Jeff Tremaine's Jackass Forever (which debuted with $23.2 million the week before last). It's obviously nowhere near what Spider-Man: No Way Home was able to do when it debuted at the end of December – bringing in only 17 percent of that ridiculous box office win, but it's certainly a healthy performance for the theater industry at large.
The new film didn't get much in the way buzz going for it prior to its arrival in theaters, with Uncharted presently sporting a 39 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but there are special draws that it possesses. Certainly the popularity of the video game series contributed to the win, and there are most definitely a lot of Tom Holland fans around these days who are happy to buy tickets to his movies after already having seen Spider-Man: No Way Home for the tenth time.
The blockbuster isn't technically the first of its kind this year, as Roland Emmerich's Moonfall also attempted to dazzle audiences with spectacle a couple weeks ago (and failed terribly), but its success certainly does suggest a larger desire to go watch big action on the big screen. For the health of the industry, hopefully that hunger only grows as we get deeper into 2022 and see the release of more high profile titles, the next, of course, being Matt Reeves' The Batman.
Not only is Uncharted doing well domestically, but it is already doing solid business abroad as well. The film actually got an early start in some territories, premiering back on February 11, and those ticket sales have allowed Uncharted's worldwide gross to balloon up to $132.2 million thus far. It still has a road to travel before it becomes profitable, thanks to its nine-figure budget, marketing/production costs, and full decade spent in development, but it's off to a great start.
Uncharted surely won't have legs as long as Spider-Man: No Way Home's, particularly because of the aforementioned Caped Crusader movie that is on the way soon, but the fact that it is a theatrical exclusive release and has extremely limited competition next week means that it could end up making a significant amount of money before it is done playing on screens around the world.
Channing Tatum's Dog Puts Up A Good Fight, But Is No Match For A Video Game Blockbuster
There was never any doubt that Uncharted was going to take the top spot at the box office this week, but one thing movie fans can be excited about is the fact and Channing Tatum and Reid Carolin's Dog also put up some surprising numbers and exceeded opening weekend estimates. Under normal circumstances, $15 million made in three days wouldn't been see as that big a deal, but 2022 hasn't exactly provided us with normal circumstances, and what the movie is able to do is impressive as a result.
That $15 million doesn't put it among Uncharted, Scream, and Jackass Forever, but it is more than Kenneth Branagh's Death On The Nile made last week and more than what Moonfall made at the start of the month – and Dog surely cost a fraction of those big titles. A movie about a guy road-tripping with a canine companion having the fourth biggest opening weekend of the year thus far is a pretty nice feather in its cap.
The success also has to be seen as a nice "welcome back" for Channing Tatum. Not counting his quick cameo role in Shawn Levy's Free Guy or his extremely supporting part in Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Dog is Tatum's first time playing a live-action lead since 2017 when he teamed up with Adam Driver in Steven Soderbergh's Logan Lucky. The new movie isn't one that went into theaters with significant expectations, but it's coming out of its opening weekend with significant success.
After Breaking Avatar's Domestic Record, Spider-Man: No Way Home Barely Drops At All From Last Weekend
One last oddity that I'll point out with this week's box office has to do with the performance of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which continues to rake in cash 10 weeks after it first hit theaters. The blockbuster successfully moved into third place on the all-time domestic chart this week, officially outgrossing James Cameron's Avatar in the United States and Canada – but what's funny about the numbers the Marvel movie made in the last three days is that it's almost the same amount of money it made in the last Friday-to-Sunday. It made $7,521,730 from February 11 to February 13, and that's only a difference of four percentage points compared to what it did this weekend.
That's quite an oddity when one considers how much money that still is, and how high the film remains in the Top 10.
Looking ahead to next weekend, Uncharted is expected to be the number one movie once again, but it will be interesting to see how the chart changes thanks to the arrival of some smaller releases, including BJ McDonnell's Studio 666, the new horror comedy starring the Foo Fighters.
Be sure to come back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday to see how it all shakes out, and to preview all of the films coming out in the rest of the year, head over to our 2022 Movie Release Calendar.
