Box office: ‘Dungeon and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ outperforms expectations with $38.5M 1st place opening
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March really has been great at the box office, beginning with Michael B. Jordan’s “Creed III,” followed by two out of three franchise sequels that outperformed their original movies. This week saw the release of a new version of a popular role-playing game, as Paramount released “Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” into 3,855 theaters on Friday.
The movie, starring Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Hugh Grant, Regé-Jean Page, and more, came into the weekend with terrific reviews after a SXSW Film Festival debut, and then Paramount gave the movie a number of previews leading up to its official Thursday opening. In fact, the movie racked up $5.6 million in those early previews, including $3.5 million on Thursday, and that number added up to a fantastic $15.3 million for Friday.
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As of Sunday morning, Paramount has estimated that “Honor Among Thieves” has brought in $38.5 million in its first weekend, the third-biggest opening for the month and making it so that every single weekend this month, there was a movie opening over $30 million. It’s been a very long time since that happened, especially outside of the summer.
Fans generally seemed to enjoy the movie as much as critics, giving it an “A-” through audience poller, CinemaScore. For a little perspective, “Honor Among Thieves” made more its opening day than the entire domestic run of the 2000 “Dungeons & Dragons” movie and more for the weekend than that movie’s entire global take. “Honor Among Thieves” also made $33 million overseas in 60 markets, making for a $71.5 million global opening, though it still has a ways to go to make back its $150 million production budget.
Keanu Reeves’ “John Wick: Chapter 4” fell to second place after a huge opening weekend with a second weekend of $28.2 million, a 62% drop from its franchise high opening. It has grossed $122.9 million domestically, passing the $100 million mark in less than ten days, as it hopes to achieve the $171 million made by “Chapter 3”
SEE A 9-time Oscar nominee has a surprise cameo in ‘Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’
Fledgling distributor Angel Studios released the biblical epic, “His Only Son,” into 1,920 theaters on Friday where it brought in an estimated $5.3 million. That normally would put it in third place, except another movie was estimated to make that exact same amount. With an “A” CinemaScore, “His Only Son” has a good chance at continuing to do well as counter-programming, especially over Easter weekend next week.
The movie it seemingly tied with for third place was Paramount’s “Scream VI,” which had a smaller than normal 36% drop to fourth place with $5.3 million, as it winds its way to $100 million with $98.2 million grossed domestically.
The aforementioned “Creed III” dropped to fifth place with just over $5 million, a 39% drop, which brought its own domestic total to $148.6 million. It is now the highest-grossing movie in the entire “Rocky” franchise, not accounting for inflation.
“Shazam! Fury of the Gods” is the one March sequel that hasn’t lived up to its predecessor. This weekend it dropped from second place to sixth with $4.7 million, down 49%, with a measly $53.6 million domestic take so far. That’s still less than the original “Shazam!” movie made in its 2019 opening weekend, and it’s only made $119 million worldwide, making it a bonafide superhero bomb.
The Focus Features drama, “A Thousand and One,” from A.V. Rockwell, was released into 926 theaters where it made an estimated $1.8 million for seventh place, just under $2,000 per-theater. The movie received fantastic reviews since its own Sundance Film Festival premiere, where it won the coveted Grand Jury prize.
The Top 10 was filled with “65,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” and “Jesus Revolution,” all of which had bigger drops this weekend than the movies above, mostly due to losing more theaters.
This was a particularly difficult weekend for Gold Derby box office game players, as the majority picked “Wick” to win a second weekend over “D&D.” Only four players picked “His Only Son” to take third place and four others picked it to take fourth place. Therefore, there’s only the possibility of four players going 6 for 6 this weekend (if they got their #1 and 2 picks correct). Fifth place picks were fairly spread out, with 43 players correctly picking “Creed III.”
33 players went 6 for 6 in the March 24 box office game, but “MonStar” won with the most points, just narrowly beating out… well… me. Another friendly reminder to play those two Super Bets, because points do count.
On Wednesday, Universal releases the animated “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” while MGM and Amazon release Ben Affleck’s “Air.” Check back on Tuesday or Wednesday for our Easter weekend preview.
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