‘Monkey Man’s Domestic Box Office Puts Up a Solid Fight in Debut Weekend

Fending off competition from two new releases, Warner Bros. and Legendary’s Godzilla x Kong: The New Empireretained its top position at the domestic box office for the second time in a row. Universal’s action film Monkey Mandebuted at number two thanks to a modest performance that didn’t exactly match the online buzz that it had been generating, while 20th Century Studios’ The First Omen, the latest attempt to reboot the classic horror franchise, under-performed at number five. Overall business this weekend is expected to fall short of the $90 million mark, which is off massively from the same weekend last year when The Super Mario Bros. Movie was breaking records.

Directed by and starring Dev Patel, Monkey Man was initially mounted as a Netflix project, before being scooped up for a reported $10 million by Universal after Jordan Peele took a liking to it. Peele has been participating in the marketing himself, but all the online interest doesn’t appear to be paying off, with the movie falling marginally short of its $12 million projections for the weekend. Monkey Man grossed an estimated $10 million in its first three days of release, on the back of strong reviews and a healthy B+ CinemaScore from opening day audiences.

Godzilla x Kong had a considerably hefty second-weekend drop of 60% after scoring the second-best opening weekend of 2024. The movie added an estimated $31 million this weekend, pushing its running domestic total past the $130 million mark. Produced on a reported budget of $135 million, Godzilla x Kong has revitalized the MonsterVerse after the unexpected (but uncertain) success of Godzilla vs. Kong, which debuted in peak-pandemic 2021 in theaters and on streaming. Considering the unprecedented circumstances under which it was released, the film’s box office performance was hardly a reliable indicator of the franchise’s relevance. But Godzilla x Kong is a clean hit, which means that fans can likely expect more of these movies.

Horror, Action, Comedy, Family Entertainment; This Weekend Had It All

Slipping to number three in its third weekend is Sony’s Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, which added an estimated $9 million to its domestic box office haul. The latest installment in the long-running supernatural-comedy franchise has made $89 million so far and should be able to pass the $100 million mark domestically in the next few weeks. However, it remains unclear if it will be able to leg it to $130 million, which is about where its two predecessors — Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Ghostbusters: Answer the Call — finished their domestic runs.

The fourth and fifth spots went to Kung Fu Panda 4 and The First Omen. Both movies grossed around $8 million, although the animated film has now been playing in theaters for close to a month. Kung Fu Panda 4 has grossed over $165 million, making it the second-biggest installment of the franchise, behind only the first film, which concluded its domestic run with over $215 million. Elsewhere, Dune: Part Two dropped out of the top five for the first time, but still managed to gross around $7 million in its sixth weekend, taking its running domestic total to nearly $265 million. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.

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