Sure, Dev Patel’s Monkey Man was bound to rattle the box-office cage in its first weekend of action. But Kong proved who’s still the biggest primate on the block.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire climbed to the top of the box office for the second straight weekend, bashing and smashing its way to another $31.7 million in North America, according to early estimates. That pushes the film’s domestic haul to $135 million—making Godzilla x Kong the year’s third highest-grossing movie in just about 10 days of action.
Add in its overseas earnings, and Godzilla x Kong has gobbled up $361 million worldwide. Looks like distributor Warner Bros. has a monster hit on its hands.
Facing down a pair of skyscraping titans, Monkey Man never really stood a chance. That said, the R-rated thriller scraped up about $10.1 million stateside to swing into second place. Sure, that’s less than a third of what Godzilla x Kong earned—but Monkey Man also cost a fraction of Godzilla x Kong to make. Monkey Man’s production budget was $10 million, according to ScreenRant—money that Monkey Man has already earned back, plus a bit extra for a banana or two.
The weekend’s other major newcomer, The First Omen, didn’t fare quite as well. The R-rated horror prequel earned less than $8.4 million—good enough for fourth place (behind Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire and its $9 million), but not enough to scare much of anybody. Disney’s 20th Century Studios was probably hoping to rekindle a healthy horror franchise—but a start like this is hardly a good omen in itself.
Kung Fu Panda 4 closed out the top five with nearly $7.9 million. The animated sequel has now collected $166.1 million in North America and $410.4 million worldwide.
Farther down the charts, Karen Kingsbury’s Someone Like You finished seventh with $3 million—behind sixth place Dune: Part Two. But Someone Like You did beat out Wicked Little Letters, a foul-mouthed British comedy that expanded wide this weekend. The R-rated Letters earned $1.6 million. And you know what that spells? Disappointment.
One Response
I’m not really into the genre, but I have to wonder if releasing The First Omen right after Immaculate (which did make back its tiny budget) was the best move. I am glad that both the Western and Eastern versions of Godzilla have seemed to do very well in recent years, even if it’s funny that two blockbuster sequels coming out right near each other both have “Empire” in the name.