The first weekend of February kicks off with the most robust crop of new releases we’ve seen since December, with a pair of wide-release studio movies – Paramount’s Jackass Forever and Lionsgate’s Moonfall – hitting theaters following a relatively fallow January. The former film easily won the weekend (and dethroned long-running box office champ Spider-Man: No Way Home) with a strong $M opening, while Moonfall settled for second place with a soft debut relative to its scale (i.e. budget).
Jackass Forever took in an estimated $23.5M from 3,604 locations in its opening frame, marking another strong debut for a franchise that has never faltered at the box office since the first entry, Jackass: The Movie, dropped into theaters with $22.76M in 2002 and legged it out to $64.26M domestic. While the opening of Jackass Forever is the second-lowest of the series to date, it still turned in a solid debut, particularly for a film with a reported budget of just $10M. Overseas, it grossed an additional estimated $5.2M from 9 markets, including $2.8M in the U.K. and $1.8M in Australia.
The weekend result for Jackass (which debuted exclusively in theaters) is particularly impressive given that the franchise has been dormant since Bad Grandpa’s release in 2013 over eight years ago. The series’ core Gen X/older millennial fanbase has aged significantly since then, while younger demographics who didn’t grow up watching the MTV series and the previous films are far more attuned to the YouTube and TikTok prank-video universe. That said, 67% of the opening weekend audience fell between the ages of 18 and 34, with 25% over the age of 35, showing that the film appealed to younger moviegoers remarkably well. The lack of major new releases over the past couple of weeks also probably worked to the film’s advantage, with theatrical audiences starved for fresh content. It also benefitted from strong reviews, scoring an 85% “Certified Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes (its Audience Score there is also terrific at 93%). As expected, the audience was heavily male at 68%, while 25% of audience members were over the age of 35.
The studio reports that the cringe-comedy strongly over-indexed in the Western U.S., over-indexed in the Midwest, came in right around expectations in the Northeast and South Central and under-indexex in the Southeast. Some of the underperforming markets this weekend, including New York, were affected by the winter storm that encompassed a good portion of the continental U.S. over the last week. Los Angeles was the top market, boasting 9 of the film’s 10 top-grossing theaters over the weekend.
Speaking of reviews, Moonfall‘s critical notices fell far short of respectable, with the Roland Emmerich action pic (which stars Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson) registering a weak Rotten Tomatoes average of 40%. That, in addition to a standard-issue disaster-movie premise that clearly didn’t excite a blockbuster-sized contingent of moviegoers, resulted in a $10M opening in 3,446 locations, good enough for second place. That would seem to be an unfortunate start for a film budgeted at a reported $140M, though Lionsgate expected a debut in the $10M range going into the weekend and claims the film will be profitable for the studio. Nonetheless, non-superhero action films tend to have difficulty gaining superhero-sized traction in the current theatrical marketplace, and Moonfall is no exception.
IMAX accounted for 14% of Moonfall‘s U.S. box office, while PLF screens were responsible for 33%. Sixty percent of the opening weekend audience was male, while 75% was over the age of 25.
The weekend’s third-place finisher, Spider-Man: No Way Home, which grossed an estimated $9.6M in its eighth weekend of release. The MCU tentpole now stands at $748.95M domestically, putting it a little over $11M shy of the third highest-grossing film of all time in North America, James Cameron’s revolutionary 2009 blockbuster Avatar, which tallied $760.5M on the continent ($749.8M of that from its original run). Not adjusting for inflation, No Way Home will easily surpass that total within the next couple of weeks — a fairly remarkable achievement for a film released during the pandemic and particularly for a film whose theatrical run coincided with the game-changing omicron wave.
No Way Home grossed an estimated $15.6M from 63 overseas markets, bringing its international total to $1.027B and its global total to $1.77B. Top-grossing international territories to date are the U.K. ($122.5M), Mexico ($75.1M), South Korea ($62.6M), France ($62M) and Australia ($56.3M). The Sony release has yet to open in China.
Fourth place went to Scream, which took in an estimated $4.73M in its fourth weekend of release (down 35%), bringing the Paramount “re-quel” to $68.94M to date.
In fifth place was Sing 2, which grossed an estimated $4.17M in its seventh weekend (down just 11%) for a total of $139.58M to date. Overseas, the Universal animated sequel took in an estimated $14.01M from 63 territories, including a $1.1M opening in Denmark and a $6.6M sophomore weekend in the U.K. & Ireland, bringing its international total to $151.97M and its global tally to $291.54M.
The King’s Man finished in sixth place with an estimated $1.2M in its seventh weekend, bringing the Disney/20th Century Studios release to $35.8M so far. It grossed an additional $2.7M overseas this weekend, for an international total of $84.9M and a global total of $120.7M.
Redeeming Love grossed an estimated $1.01M in seventh place, giving the Universal-distributed romance $8.08M to date. That was followed in eighth place by American Underdog, which grossed an estimated $800k for a total of $25.88M so far. In ninth place, Universal’s The 355 grossed an estimated $700k in its fifth weekend, bringing the espionage actioner’s total to $14.18M.
Licorice Pizza rounded out the top 10 with an estimated $615k in weekend number 11, bringing the total for the UAR release to $12.69M.
SPECIALTY RELEASES
Neon released Joachim Trier’s critically-acclaimed The Worst Person in the World on four screens and grossed an estimated $135k, giving the Norwegian film a terrific per-screen average of $33,760, the highest of any movie so far this year and the highest of any foreign-language film since Parasite and Portrait of a Lady on Fire in 2019. Selected by Norway as its entry for the International Feature category at this year’s Oscars, the film is slated to expand to roughly 50 locations next weekend.
More to come.
Sunday’s Studio Weekend Estimates: February 4-6, 2022
| Title | Estimated weekend | % change | Locations | Location change | Average | Total | Weekend | Distributor |
| jackass forever | $23,500,000 | 3,604 | $6,521 | $23,500,000 | 1 | Paramount | ||
| Moonfall | $10,005,000 | 3,446 | $2,903 | $10,005,000 | 1 | Lionsgate | ||
| Spider-Man: No Way Home | $9,600,000 | -13% | 3,600 | -75 | $2,667 | $748,951,607 | 8 | Sony Pictures |
| Scream | $4,730,256 | -35% | 3,227 | -291 | $1,466 | $68,940,000 | 4 | Paramount |
| Sing 2 | $4,170,000 | -11% | 3,266 | -184 | $1,277 | $139,577,925 | 7 | Universal |
| The King’s Man | $1,184,000 | -29% | 1,910 | -530 | $620 | $35,806,091 | 7 | 20th Century |
| Redeeming Love | $1,010,000 | -43% | 1,797 | -166 | $562 | $8,075,775 | 3 | Universal |
| American Underdog | $800,000 | -31% | 1,470 | -643 | $544 | $25,882,720 | 7 | Lionsgate |
| The 355 | $700,000 | -47% | 1,710 | -803 | $409 | $14,177,390 | 5 | Universal |
| Licorice Pizza | $614,947 | -2% | 786 | 14 | $782 | $12,693,476 | 11 | United Artists |
| Ghostbusters: Afterlife | $535,000 | -31% | 954 | -216 | $561 | $128,782,659 | 12 | Sony Pictures |
| West Side Story | $387,000 | -33% | 800 | -535 | $484 | $36,687,924 | 9 | 20th Century |
| House of Gucci | $299,818 | -40% | 537 | -370 | $558 | $53,445,198 | 11 | United Artists |
| Encanto | $219,000 | -31% | 470 | -170 | $466 | $94,128,675 | 11 | Walt Disney |
| Nightmare Alley | $204,000 | -60% | 705 | -398 | $289 | $10,791,340 | 8 | Searchlight |
| Belfast | $191,000 | 60% | 390 | 194 | $490 | $7,472,585 | 13 | Focus Features |
| The Worst Person in the World | $135,042 | 4 | $33,761 | $135,042 | 1 | Neon | ||
| Belle | $116,592 | -63% | 217 | -484 | $537 | $3,633,972 | 4 | GKIDS |
| Sundown | $104,300 | 376% | 195 | 189 | $535 | $140,520 | 2 | Bleecker Street |
| Drive My Car | $100,600 | 3% | 115 | 1 | $875 | $944,869 | 11 | Janus Films |
| Poly Styrene | $4,212 | 6 | $702 | $32,689 | 1 | Utopia |
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