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'Lego Batman' and 'Fifty Shades' power the holiday box office as 'Great Wall' fails
("The Lego Batman Movie."Warner Bros.)
The long President's Day weekend helped holdovers like "The Lego Batman Movie" and "Fifty Shades Darker," but for new releases "The Great Wall," "Fist Fight," and "A Cure for Wellness" there wasn't much business.
"Lego Batman" took in an estimated $34.2 million, according to Exhibitor Relations, to win the domestic box office for a second consecutive weekend. That's only a 35 percent dip from last week.
The animated movie that has pleased kids and Batman die hards alike will have taken in over $40 million by Monday for a cume of over $100 million in the States.
And negative reviews of "Fifty Shades Darker" hasn't stopped fans of the popular book series to come out and see the sequel to "Fifty Shades of Grey," as the movie came in second place for a second straight weekend with $20.9 million ($24.1 million by Monday).
The "best" performer out of the new releases this weekend was Matt Damon's $150 million-budgeted action thriller "The Great Wall," which took in only $18.1 million ($21 million four-day total). An extremely disappointing release for Universal as the movie was DOA out of the gate, earning only $5.9 million on Friday.
("The Great Wall."Universal)
Warner Bros.'s Ice Cube/Charlie Day comedy "First Fight" took in $12 million (just under $13 million four-day), which the studio will live with and hope it makes back more on its investment in home video.
While Fox's trippy "A Cure for Wellnes" from director Gore Verbinski (numerous "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies) found more press creating fake news to promote the movie than for the title itself. It befuddled critics and audiences as the visually stunning $40 million thriller only took in $4.2 million (just under $5 million four-day).
Studios are finding that titles it releases the week before a holiday weekend are doing better than the ones they schedule specifically for the four-day weekend. The Martin Luther King Jr. weekend in January had the same result as President's Day. Going forward it will be interesting to see if studios adjust and put its titles that would typically fit for a long weekend and place it the week before.
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