Movie Monday: ‘Challengers’ Is Champion; ‘Unsung Hero’ Finishes Second

Game. Set. Match. The tennis-centric film Challengers took center court at the box office this weekend, slicing its way to an estimated $15 million in North America. The drama also served up $10 million overseas, bringing its total gross to $25 million. Yep, you could say that Zendaya’s latest movie made quite the … racket.

But while Challenger’s initial returns were good enough for a first-place finish, the R-rated drama was pretty pricey to make, with its creators reportedly spending $55 million. It’ll need to net some nice returns in the coming weeks to turn a profit.

Unsung Hero doesn’t have that particular issue to worry about. The Christian drama chronicling the riches-to-rags-to-riches story of the musical Smallbone family (which includes Rebecca St. James and For King and Country’s Joel and Luke Smallbone) finished second to Challengers, earning nearly $7.8 million in North America. But the film’s reported budget was just $6 million. And given that audiences loved the drama—giving it a rare A+ on Cinemascore—Unsung Hero may be just warming up.

A trio of holdovers fills the rest of the top five.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire continues its own box-office rampage, pounding its way to another $7.2 million stateside. That boosts its already-monstrous North American coffers to $181.7 million and its worldwide gross to $519.4 million. That might be just enough to repair at least one of the city blocks that the monsters have destroyed during their cinematic careers.

Civil War parlayed its own brand of cinematic destruction to a $7 million, fourth-place finish. It’s now earned $56.2 million. And Abigail, the horror comedy featuring a tween ballerina vampire, drained moviegoers of nearly $5.3 million to finish fifth.

Boy Kills World, the weekend’s third new wide-release flick, failed to make a killing of its own. It earned just $1.7 million to finish 10^th—about $110,000 ahead of the Alien re-release. The latter earned $1.6 million to land in 11^th place, but don’t feel too bad for the sci-fi horror flick: Alien earned $78.9 million stateside during its initial 1979 run—which would be about $339.3 million today. You know what they say: In space, no one can hear you count your money.