David Yates’ Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore opened at the No. 1 spot last weekend, selling a solid $43 million domestically over its first three days. Add in foreign sales, and Dumbledore has already brought in $193 million worldwide. Whoa.
Yates has directed the last seven films in the Harry Potter franchise, and is signed on to direct the next two. A real company man, that Yates.
The film stars Eddie Redmayne, Jude Law, the problematic Ezra Miller, Mads Mikkelson, and Dan Fogler, with J.K. Rowling writing the screenplay. Gotta wonder if the massive drop-off in domestic Harry Potter sales is more about COVID-19 or Rowling being canceled. Or maybe people just don’t care about Dumbledore’s world like they used to? Either way, I bet this is a beautifully produced, very fun film. I’ll watch it someday … if I’m ever bedridden.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 took the No. 2 spot at the domestic box office, selling another $30 million. Sonic 2 sold $119 million in the U.S. and $232 million worldwide over its first 10 days of release.
Action/rom-com The Lost City took the No. 3 spot with just $6.5 million in sales, upping the film’s domestic sales total to $79 million ($88 million worldwide). Not great, but better than I expected for a film that seems as if it should probably be exclusively on a streaming service.
The movie of the moment, A24’s Everything Everywhere All at Once, was No. 4, bringing in another $6.2 million. So far, Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s new Kaufmanian adventure flick has made about $18 million domestically. It’ll be interesting to see how this twisty arthouse epic does abroad. Look for this one to make a whole lot of Top 5 lists come year’s end.
Rounding out last weekend’s Top 5 was Rosalind Ross’ Father Stu, starring Mark Wahlberg as a boxer-turned-priest. The flick is, from what I can tell, one of the best-produced Christian films of recent memory. The film sold $5.7 million over its first weekend. Look for this one to do really well once it hits streaming services.
Also of note, the great Jacques Auidard’s new film, Paris, 13th District, also started playing here and there around the country. The flick is getting some great reviews, but is totally flopping. The movie made just $28,000, while playing on 63 screens. Ouch. I can’t wait to see this one.
This will be a big weekend for film fans.
Let’s get the worst wide release, out of the way: animated adventure flick The Bad Guys. Skip this one, unless you have kids.
The two notable releases of this weekend are Robert Eggers’ The Northman and Nic Cage’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
Eggers is very much on the A-list of American directors, and this is by far his biggest release do date. The Northman stars Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Willem Dafoe, Björk, Ethan Hawke, and Anya Taylor-Joy. Should be good.
Then we have The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, in which Cage plays a fictionalized version of himself, who gets mixed up in a kidnapping scheme that involves the CIA and a foreign drug cartel. I saw an advance screening of this in downtown Brooklyn last weekend and it was certainly fun. Was it good? Ehh, good-minus at best.
I’m a huge Cage fan, so watching a film built to celebrate his idiosyncrasies was a good time. I just wanted it to be a much better time is all.