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 Afghan war drama "12 Strong" took second with $16.5 million at
3,002 sites for Warner Bros. and STXfilms' "Den of Thieves"
followed with $15.3 million from 2,432 venues. Fox's "The Post"
finished fourth with $12 million at 2,851 venues and its fifth
weekend of "The Greatest Showman" remained a solid draw in fifth
with $11 million at 2,823 screens.
"Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" has shown remarkable staying
power, declining only 28% this weekend and lifting its 33-day
North American total to $317 million -- the 61st highest of all
time. It's Sony's fifth highest domestic grosser of all time,
trailing only the first three Spider-Man titles and last
summer's "Spider-Man: Homecoming."
"Jumanji" is also singular in winning the box office in its
third, fourth and fifth weekends after finishing second in its
first two weekends to "Star Wars: The Last Jedi." "This is an
unprecedented and unusual box office trajectory for a wide
release blockbuster," said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media
analyst with comScore.
The action comedy, starring Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart, has
also kept overall domestic business healthy with the
year-to-date total at $730.1 million through Sunday, up 2.1%
from a year ago. The weekend's total hit about $137 million,
down 6% from the same frame in 2017 when "Split" opened with $40
million.
"Another great performance by the seemingly unstoppable 'Jumanji'
powers the pre-Oscar nominations weekend while bolstered by a
pair of solid debuts from '12 Strong' and 'Den of Thieves,' but
this was not enough to beat a tough weekend over weekend
comparison to the year ago stellar performance of M. Night
Shyamalan's 'Split,'" Dergarabedian said.
"12 Strong," starring Chris Hemsworth and Michael Shannon, had
been tracking in the $14 million to $17 million range. The movie
is based Doug Stanton's 2009 bestseller "Horse Soldiers," which
centers on CIA paramilitary operations officers and U.S. Special
Forces sent to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan immediately
after the Sept. 11 attacks. Prospects for ongoing business are
solid, given its A Cinemascore.
Production companies for "12 Strong" are Alcon Entertainment,
Black Label Media, and Jerry Bruckheimer Films with Nicolai
Fuglsig directing. Bruckheimer began developing the film in 2009
while at Disney.
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The R-rated "Den of Thieves," starring Gerard Butler, O'Shea
Jackson Jr., and Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, finished well above
forecasts, which had been in the $9 million range. The film
follows the intersecting lives of an elite unit of the Los
Angeles County Sheriff's Department and a successful bank
robbery crew as the outlaws plan a seemingly impossible heist on
the Federal Reserve Bank in downtown Los Angeles.
Christian Gudegast is directing from his original screenplay,
based on a story by Gudegast and Paul Scheuring, and is produced
by Tucker Tooley and Mark Canton, who spent 15 years developing
the film. "Den of Thieves" carries a $30 million budget and
generated a B+ Cinemascore.
"It's incredibly satisfying to have this in theaters and
performing so well after all this time," Tooley told Variety. "STXfilms
has done a great job activating social media on this."
"The Post" centers on the 1971 legal battle by the Washington
Post and New York Times over the publication of the Pentagon
Papers and stars Meryl Streep as WaPo publisher Katharine Graham
and Tom Hanks as editor Ben Bradlee. It showed respectable
staying power with a 37% decline from its first weekend in wide
release and has totaled $45.2 million domestically.
"The Greatest Showman," starring Hugh Jackman as P.T. Barnum,
remained a powerful draw with a remarkable small decline of 12%
in its fifth weekend. The domestic total has hit $113.5 million
while the international box office is at $118 million.
Warner Bros.' second weekend of family comedy "Paddington 2"
finished sixth with $8.2 million at 3,702 sites, followed by
Lionsgate's sophomore session of Liam Neeson's "The Commuter"
with $6.7 million at 2,892 venues. Both titles have reached $25
million in 10 days.
Disney-Lucasfilm's sixth weekend of "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"
came in eighth with $6.6 million at 2,456 locations for a 38-day
total of $604.3 million. It trails "The Avengers" by less than
$20 million for the fifth spot on that list.
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