- Box Office
World Box Office, January 7 – 13, 2019
Wheelchair-bound comedy The Upside pulled off a major upset this weekend and beat superhuman Aquaman to first place at the US box office. Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart’s remake of 2011 French hit The Intouchables took first place with $19.9 million. Cranston plays a crotchety and wealthy paralyzed man who learns to love life again from Hart’s character, a poor nurse who is hired to be his caretaker. The film is about how they overcome their class divide and strike up a real and meaningful friendship. The Upside was originally made by Harvey Weinstein’s TWC and slated to be released in 2018 but was sold to STX and kept on the shelf until now amid the former mogul’s legal troubles.
Aquaman meanwhile, despite slipping into second place for the first time since its release, earned $17.5 million at home and passed the $1 billion mark worldwide after taking in $27.9 million internationally this frame. It has now passed The Dark Knight and is on the way to overtaking The Dark Knight Rises’ $1.08 billion gross to become the biggest DC movie of all time. China has been a strong market for the film, contributing $278 million of its foreign revenue and nearly equaling its $287 million domestic take-ups. Other top markets for Aquaman are South Korea with $38.2 million, Brazil with $32 million, Mexico with $28.6 million, and the UK with $25.8 million.
Third place on the US chart went to Sony’s A Dog’s Way Home, with $11.3 million. Dog’s Way is a story in the vein of Homeward Bound about a dog who gets lost on vacation and has an epic cross-country adventure to find his masters again. It was adapted from a novel by W. Bruce Cameron, who also wrote the book that 2017 hit A Dog’s Purpose was based on. International releases start this week.
Back to the combined chart, Paramount’s Transformers spin-off Bumblebee took second place this week with $43.7 million thanks in large part to a strong $36.5 million sophomore showing in China. It’s Middle Kingdom cume is now $105.7 million, just behind, but soon to outgrow, the US’s $108 million gross. It dropped 54% and fell into seventh place in the US with $6.7 million. Total global sales sit at $364 million, making this a success for Paramount with their series low investment of around $100 million in the film’s production. Top international markets are the UK at $13.5 million, Mexico at $11 million, and France at $8.5 million.
On the specialty market, Focus’s On the Basis of Sex moved into wide release and took $6.2 million, bringing its domestic cume to $10.6 million. If Beale Street Could Talk widened its range as well, taking its total theater count to 1,018 and adding $2.3 million for a $7.7 million cume. Bohemian Rhapsody also upped its screen count, by 254, and took in $3.2 million in the wake of its big Golden Globe wins last Sunday.
Next Week we have M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass, a sequel to year 2000 anti-superhero film Unbreakable that sees a return for Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson and adds James McAvoy’s villain from 2016’s Split.
See the latest world box office estimates: