Box Office: Ride Along 2 Wins MLK Weekend, Star Wars Falls To #3

Box Office, Columns, News, Top Story

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Due to Monday being a holiday in remembrance of Martin Luther King, Jr., we didn’t have a box office report. But here’s the bottom line: Ride Along 2 is the movie that finally knocked Star Wars: The Force Awakens from the top of the box office mountain. For the weekend, the comedy raked in $35.3 million and added an estimated $6.2M on MLK Day. Second place was 20th Century Fox’s The Revenant. Getting nominated for 12 Oscars seemed to help attendance as its audience only dropped 20.2% from the weekend prior. It finished with $31.8 million.

As for The Force Awakens, the seventh installment in the Star Wars franchise, it fell to third place with $26.3M. In five weeks it has made $858.4M in the United States, nearly $100 million more than the previous record-setter, James Cameron’s Avatar. Worldwide it has amassed $1,871.1 billion, leapfrogging the likes of Furious 7, The Avengers, and Jurassic World to rank third globally all time.

A crowded marketplace prevented Michael Bay’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi to have numbers that matched the likes of Lone Survivor and American Sniper in years past. It finished with $16.2M. The other new release in the top 10, the animated Norm of the North opened to a per-screen average of $2,837 and finished with $6.84 million.

Getting an Oscar boost thanks to nominations where No. 8 The Big Short ($5.3M) and No. 10 The Hateful Eight ($3.57M). Also of note, Fox Searchlight, Open Road Films, and The Weinstein Company added screens for the Oscar nominated Brooklyn, Spotlight and Carol, of which the two former saw sizable jumps in attendance and earnings from already having played in theaters for ten weeks.

Full top 10 below.

01. Ride Along 2 – $35.3 Million
02. The Revenant – $31.8 Million ($89.9M)
03. Star Wars: The Force Awakens – $26.3 Million ($852.3M)
04. 13 Hours – $16.2 Million
05. Daddy’s Home – $9.5 Million ($129.5M)
06. Norm of the North – $6.8 Million
07. The Forest – $6 Million ($21.3M)
08. The Big Short – $5.3 Million ($50.6M)
09. Sisters – $4.7 Million ($82.1M)
10. The Hateful Eight – $3.57 Million ($47.7M)

Travis Leamons is one of the Inside Pulse Originals and currently holds the position of Managing Editor at Inside Pulse Movies. He's told that the position is his until he's dead or if "The Boss" can find somebody better. I expect the best and I give the best. Here's the beer. Here's the entertainment. Now have fun. That's an order!