Weekend Box Office: An Honest Thief takes the crown as things get even more grim
We’ve spent weeks now trying to figure out how to come up with new ways to say that the pandemic is choking the theater industry to death, that it’s not necessarily safe to go to a movie theater even if they’ve reopened where you live, and that while going to a theater to see Tenet is one thing, it doesn’t make a damn lick of sense to risk your life and the lives of others by going to see something that has either gotten middling reviews or is already available on streaming platforms. Then, last week, the comfortableness of our routine was shattered by the arrival of The War With Grandpa, the first movie in over a month to make more money at the box office than Tenet. Rather than a sign of things changing, though, it mostly seemed like a reflection of the fact that the state of the coronavirus in this country wasn’t getting any better and that everyone who was willing and able to see Tenet based on where they live had already done so.
This week, the times they are a-continuin’ to change, because another movie has already come around to dethrone My War With Grandpa. We don’t even need to name it, because it’s obviously the biggest and most exciting movie of the year, but we’ll name it anyway: Honest Thief, a Liam Neeson thriller that sounds a heckuva lot like every other Liam Neeson thriller. (For the record, Taken is currently streaming on Starz and Cold Pursuit is on Cinemax, so you don’t need to leave the house for this kind of thing.) Honest Thief pulled in $3.7 million this weekend, beating The War With Grandpa’s $2.5 million (for a two-week total of $7.2 million).
Tenet’s descent continued, dropping 23 percent to make only $1.6 million ($50 million total after seven weeks), followed by a re-release of The Nightmare Before Christmas, which made $1.3 million and is available on Disney+. Fourth place went to Hocus Pocus, which is also on Disney+, and fifth place was claimed by 2 Hearts, which Variety describes as a “faith-based organ transplant movie.” (It made $565,000.) After that is The New Mutants ($465,000), which has continued to make barely more money than Unhinged ($425,000), with Love And Monsters and The Kid Detective rounding out the top 10 with $255,000 and $135,000, respectively. So yes, things are still dire at the box office, whether you’re an Honest Thief or a Kid Detective.
For a more detailed analysis of this weekend’s box office numbers, head over to Box Office Mojo.