By Chris Kavan - 01/27/21 at 09:32 PM CT
Forget the weekend box office. If anyone is really still interested, Liam Neeson's The Marksman held on to the top spot with a mere $2 million and just managed to break the $1000 per-theater mark with $1005 average, raising its domestic total to $6.1 million.
The Croods: A New Age managed to leap above Wonder Woman: 1984 for second place with $1.8 million, dipping a light 9% after nine weeks in theaters and providing the lone bright spot with $41.8 million domestic and nearly $140 million worldwide. Meanwhile, Wonder Woman snagged $1.6 million for a new $37.7 million while its worldwide total stands at $148 million. It's done well enough but the real test will be what happens when its one-month HBO Max streaming deal ends. Rounding out the top five the fourth and fifth place spots went to News of the World and Monster Hunter - both which look to make around $810,000 with News topping out at $9.7 million and Monster Hunter hitting $10.2 million.
But enough of that, once a0gain the bigger story coming out this week was that the latest entry in the James Bond franchise has pulled back - all the way into October, as No Time to Die has again been delayed. This, in turn, led to a slew of other films being pushed back to the fall as well, including Ghostbusters: Afterlife, A Quiet Place II, Morbius, The King's Men and Uncharted. While some big films remain for the near term spring - Disney's Black Widow and F9 and Godzilla vs. Kong (which was pushed back - but just a week), time will tell if more big films shift from spring/summer to fall as the Covid-19 vaccine rollout continues to hit some roadblocks. In fact, a recent report suggest the box office won't fully recover until 2023 - and that is a long time for theaters to remain afloat with few big films to count on. I, for one, subscribe to the idea that going to the theater will soon be more of a luxury - not gone, but no longer an every week kind of thing - while streaming will become the defacto platform for most films. Time will tell, but if recent events are any indication, 2021 is going to play out a lot like last year, with films few and far between for a good portion of the year.
As for the MPAA Ratings Bulletin - nothing wide this week at all and not even anything in limited that I'm even partly interested in discussing so I'll drop the list and we'll hope for bigger and better things next time.
BATMAN: THE LONG HALLOWEEN PART ONE
Rated PG-13 for violence, bloody images, language and some smoking.
DEMON SLAYER - KIMETSU NO YAIBA - THE MOVIE: MUGEN TRAIN
Rated R for violence and bloody images. (Dubbed and Subbed Versions)
MY SALINGER YEAR
Rated R for language and some sexual references.
ROE V WADE
Rated PG-13 for mature thematic content and some bloody/disturbing images.
SON OF THE SOUTH
Rated PG-13 for strong racial slurs and violence throughout, and thematic elements.
THE TOLL
Rated R for language throughout and some violence.
