Who would think that the Force could be beaten by a couple of guys? But yes, Ice Cube and Kevin Hart did just that this weekend. The second installment of Universal’s Ride Along franchise took the number 1 spot at the domestic box office with a total of $39.5 million from 3,175 locations, ending the dominance of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. With the extended weekend in the U.S. thanks to the Martin Luther King holiday on Monday, Ride Along 2 will easily pass the $40 million mark right out of the gate. As was the case with the first picture (which opened exactly two years ago and went on to gross $134.9 million domestically), African-Americans were at the core of the action/comedy’s audience, with 34% of ticket purchases.

Overseas, however, Kevin Hart and Ice Cube had to yield to the Force. Star Wars: The Force Awakens held fast to the top on the international front, crossing the $1 billion mark with an additional $47.3 million in ticket sales, becoming only the fifth film in history to do so, after Avatar, Titanic, Jurassic World and Furious 7. In the coveted Chinese market J. J. Abram’s space opera had to contend with less screens, thanks to an influx of local releases this week, but it’s still doing well with a $95 million cume since its opening on January 9. Overall, Force has a worldwide cume of $1, 863,653,000 dollars, which is a lot of digits in any galaxy. And even though Ride Along 2 apparently paled in comparison with $2.7 million from its first 10 overseas markets, that is twice as much as the first film made in some territories.

Three Golden Globes – best motion picture, drama; best director, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu; best performance by an actor in a motion picture, drama, Leonardo DiCaprio – certainly helped push The Revenant through what turned out to be a spectacular expansion. With $35 million from 3,559 locations this week (and a domestic total of $93.2 million), Iñarritu’s frontier drama is just below Ride Along 2 and ahead of The Force Awakens, which amassed a modest $31 million in the same time frame. The Revenant is doing well overseas as well, coming in second after Force Awakens with $31.5 million from 25 markets for a $58.6 million foreign tally and $151.8 million worldwide cume. A number 1 opener in the UK with a $7.8 million take, The Revenant has yet to be released in several territories, including Japan, Brazil, France, India and most of Eastern Europe.

This week's other new titles didn’t fare well. Michael Bay’s military drama 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi – a conservative-skewed account of the terrorist attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi that left four dead, including the U.S. Ambassador – came in fourth place with $16 million from 2,389 theaters. The horror pic The Forest, led by Game of Thrones star Natalie Dormer and the animated feature Norm of the North performed poorly out of the gate exclusively in the North American market, with tallies between $8 million and $5 million.

Next week we’ll have the domestic release of Sony’s sci fi thriller The 5th Wave, starring Chloe Grace Morezt (currently doing ok business overseas in 30 territories with a cume of $8.2 million); the comedy Dirty Grandpa, starring Robert DeNiro and Zac Efron; the sci fi noir Synchronicity, from the creators of cult favorite The SignalMonster Hunt. Is America ready for magic tales from medieval China? We shall see…

Ana Maria Bahiana