Slowly but surely, the world of the big screen is coming back. Things have been looking up since the start of 2021, and things only seem to be improving as we move deeper into the spring. This past weekend proved to be quite excellent evidence of that growth, as more than five movies grossed more than $1 million between Friday and Sunday (a first since the pandemic first shut down theaters), and leading them all was Ilya Naishuller's Nobody with a strong opening performance.
While the Bob Odenkirk-led action movie didn't exactly break any records, Box Office Mojo says that the film pulled in $6.8 million during its first weekend playing on the big screen. It marks the third highest grossing start for an action movie since the start of the pandemic, behind Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman 1984 ($16.7 million) Christopher Nolan's Tenet ($9 million). The movie played in over 2,400 theaters around the country, resulting in an average of $2,772 per location.
Taking into consideration some of their other releases from the past year, Universal Pictures is likely pleased with the results from the box office. In the last few months of 2020 the studio became much more confident about launching titles on the big screen thanks to the deal that was struck with AMC Theatres, and Nobody made more in its first three days than movies like Thomas Bezucha's Let Him Go ($4 million), Paul Greengrass' News Of The World ($2.3 million), and Christopher Landon's Freaky ($3.6 million) did during their respective theatrical openings. If all things are relative, it's a win.
Nobody is actually one of two big recent box office success stories, however, as Walt Disney Animation Studios' Raya And The Last Dragon has put up some strong numbers since it debuted earlier this month (both in theaters and on Disney+ with Premiere Access). The film got off to a surprisingly slow start when it first arrived in cinemas, selling fewer tickets than Tim Story's Tom And Jerry did during its February launch, but it has successfully changed its own narrative. The $8.6 million that it made during its opening has since become a domestic total of $28.7 million – with $3.8 million coming from this past weekend. Again, success is relative (the movie would have probably made more than 10 times that amount by now under normal circumstances), but we're trying to stay positive here.
As for the other members of the seven figure club this week, the aforementioned Tom and Jerry came in third, earning an additional $2.5 million; Doug Liman's Chaos Walking came in fourth place with $1.2 million added to its $11.5 million total; and Dominic Cooke's The Courier snagged fifth place with a take of $1.1 million after being added to 208 new theaters.
This past weekend allowed us to be optimistic about what's to come when it comes to growth at the box office, and things are only looking up given what's coming out this week: Adam Wingard's Godzilla vs. Kong. Thanks to an early release overseas, the film already has a worldwide total of $123.1 million, and it will be interesting to see how the domestic numbers add to that. It's a story we're definitely staying on top of, so be on the look out for updates, and check out the MonsterVerse blockbuster on the big screen starting this Wednesday, March 31.
