For a weekend dominated by M. Night Shyamalan, there weren't many twists at the box office.
Universal's Glass, a superhero successor to director Shyamalan's Unbreakable and Split that stars Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis and James McAvoy, sold an estimated $40.6 million in tickets during its first weekend in North American theaters, easily topping the chart at the end of a relatively quiet week.
Glass completes a trilogy that started in 2000 with Unbreakable, a superhero thriller that introduced audiences to David Dunn (Willis), a football player-turned-security guard with superhuman abilities, and Elijah Price (Jackson), a comic-book theorist. While that film was successful at the box office and has since developed a cult following, its sales were modest compared with those of Shyamalan's previous blockbuster, The Sixth Sense, which was the second-highest-grossing movie of 1999.
With Glass, Universal was likely hoping to combine the cult status of Unbreakable with the box-office momentum created by Split, which came out in early 2017. The latter movie, which stars McAvoy as a kidnapper with multiple personalities, was a surprise hit, making about $138.3 million domestically during its time in theaters against a production budget of just $9 million, according to Box Office Mojo.
Split made about $40 million during its opening weekend, so Glass is performing comparably -- although it seems unlikely that the movie will wildly outpace Split, particularly since it was given mostly negative reviews from critics. (Glass has a 36 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.)
In her review for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis called the movie enjoyable but wrote that "its air of misterioso quiet and encroaching, consuming terror give way to manly growling, jaw-clenching and vein-popping, and everything falls to pieces in a poorly conceptualized and staged blowout."
Jim Orr, president of domestic distribution for Universal, said any forecasts beyond how Glass performed were out of whack with the studio's own expectations. Orr granted that better reviews might have meant a larger return and that the winter storm across the Midwest and Northeast could have dampened results.
But he said Universal was thrilled with the results. The four-day total ranks Glass as the third-best Martin Luther King weekend openings ever, behind only American Sniper ($107.2 million) and Ride Along ($48.6 million). Glass also picked up $48.5 million overseas, where Disney had distribution rights.
"This came in at or above any reasonable industry expectations," Orr said.
STX's The Upside, which was No. 1 in ticket sales two weekends ago despite the controversy surrounding Kevin Hart, one of its stars, came in second place with about $15.7 million, according to Comscore, which compiles box-office data.
But the weekend's biggest surprise was the Japanese anime film Dragon Ball Super: Broly, which earned an estimated $8.7 million over the weekend from just 1,250 North American theaters, according to Comscore, and $19.5 million since opening Wednesday. (It grossed more than $7 million just on opening day.) The Funimation Films release, an animated martial arts fantasy, is the 20th film in the Dragon Ball franchise.
The result for Dragon Ball Super: Broly caught Hollywood off guard, prompting many to wonder: Just what is Dragon Ball? And who is Broly? (It is a nutty anime series created by Akira Toriyama, and the film's warrior antagonist, respectively.)
"The enthusiasm for this movie was certainly reflected in these much bigger than expected numbers for a title that I don't think anyone was that aware of, other than the true fans," said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore. "If you ask the average moviegoer if they've ever heard of Dragon Ball Super: Broly, they'd have absolutely no idea what you're talking about."
Shyamalan and Broly could do only so much for the overall marketplace. Other studios held back new wide releases to avoid going head-to-head with Glass. The box office was down 18.4 percent from the same weekend last year when Jumanji: Welcome the Jungle was still packing theaters, according to Comscore.
January is one of the slowest months for theaters. The schedule can give a movie a chance to stand out and offers older releases an opportunity to extend their run. It's also a time when fans can catch up with awards hopefuls.
MovieStyle on 01/25/2019