M3GAN Surprises at the Box Office: 2023 is here with the end of the holiday season and the beginning of the award season. With no major releases except Universal Picture’s ‘M3GAN,’ the week belonged to James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water which kept holding onto the audience’s interest and love even in the third week of its release. James Cameron’s sequel to the highest-grossing film ever, Avatar, has managed to live up to the expectations when it comes to box-office collections as the audiences remain fascinated by the enchanting land of Pandora.
The science fiction action fantasy CGI spectacle managed to top the gross total of $1.3 billion globally to become the seventh highest-grossing film of all time globally. The film has surpassed the collections of Disney’s live-action remake of Lion King (2019) and Universal Picture’s second foray into the dinosaur adventure ‘Jurassic World’ (2015) to achieve the mark. It is also currently the fifth best-performing film to release in the post-Covid-19 era.
This Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana starrer film continues to hold strong at the box office; currently playing in 4340 theatres in the US, its per theatre average earning is at $2987. Topping this week’s box office charts, The Way of Water is a tidal wave that keeps rising and smashing records as the viewers can’t get enough of the slender blue aliens and their adventures to save their homeland.
‘M3GAN’, the science fiction horror movie by Universal Pictures about a creepy doll, has been scary good to audiences and not at all scary for the creators. Just three days after its release, the film has already earned back its budget and some; M3GAN got a massive domestic box office opening of over $30 million against a production budget of just $12 million. With the international collections added, the film garnered $45 million in the first weekend of its release itself.
The film details the misadventures that follow when a life-like sentient artificially intelligent doll, M3GAN (Model 3 Generative Android), is given to a young girl; a modern-day ‘Child’s Play’ meets ‘I, Robot,’ the campy horror science fiction film is expected to thrill the audiences in the new year. The film has been a new year gift to the theatre owners pulling the audiences in for some post-holiday thrilling fun in a month of sparse audience turnout.
Third on the box office list is Universal Pictures’ adventure action-comedy animated film ‘Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,’ the sequel to Puss in Boots (2011) set in the ‘Shrek’ universe; this animated film has a stellar cast of actors in voice roles with Antonio Banderas reprising his role of voicing the titular Puss in Boots; Salma Hayek, Harvey Guillen, Florence Pugh, Olivia Colman among others are also cast in significant roles. This DreamWorks Animation film aimed at family audiences is playing in 3919 theatres across the U.S. and has a per-theatre average of $982, and is performing steadily at the box office.
Directed by Marc Foster and starring Tom Hanks in the lead role ‘A Man Called Otto,’ it earned fourth place when it comes to box-office collections. Entering the second week of its release, this Sony Pictures heartwarming comedy-drama about the friendship between a cynical grumpy widower who contemplates suicide and a quick-witted pregnant woman based on a novel by Fredrik Backman titled A Man Called Ove has made over $4.2 million domestically. Currently playing in 637 cinemas in the US, the film has a good per-theatre average of $1586. This heart-warming film is expected to perform well, adding a breath of everyday goodness to a market of spectacles.
Marvel’s ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,’ the sequel to Academy Award-nominated Black Panther, takes fifth place in the box office collections. The film is performing well even in the 9th weekend of its release. The film earned $3.3 million domestically from 2255 theatres this weekend, taking its domestic cumulative earnings to over $445 million.
