This time last week, our box office report headline was “Crazy Rich Asians is a hit, duh.” That’s an apt, well-deployed “duh”—the movie greatly outperformed expectations, but as our own A.A. Dowd put it, “Hollywood once again underestimated the appeal of a crowd-pleaser starring people of color and the desire of an underserved demographic to pay good money for stories that at least partially reflect their own cultural experience.” And surprise, surprise, the money kept rolling in. The big news here isn’t that it made money. It’s how much money it made.
Jon M. Chu’s exuberant charmer brought in an estimated $25 million in its second weekend, an amount that very nearly matches the total for its first weekend. It’s possible the total will climb when the final numbers arrive—but even now, its total draw dropped by only 5.7 percent. The technical term for that particular statistic is batshit insane. It’s one of the smallest drops of all time, and per Box Office Mojo, the single smallest drop for an August release, all without the benefit of a holiday weekend. Given that next weekend actually is a holiday weekend, don’t be surprised if the Crazy Rich Asians hot streak continues.
Here’s a useful comparison, again from last week’s report: “The Meg fell to second place in its second weekend, but only lost about half of its audience, adding another $21 million to a total that now sits around $83 million domestically.” (Emphasis ours.) There is quite a difference between a film only losing half its audience and a film only losing six percent of its audience. Still, Jason Statham’s giant fucking shark movie continues to do well, adding another $13 million to its domestic total. That’s enough to push the giant fucking shark past the $100 million mark domestically in its third week; when you fold in international numbers, the giant fucking shark’s total haul tops $408 million.
Both fared better than The Happytime Murders. The Melissa McCarthy-led “puppet jizz movie” landed like a piece of moist felt with a $10 million total, the lowest ever for a film in which McCarthy had top billing. Rounding out the top five were Mission: Impossible—Fallout, which is fast approaching the $200 million mark after four weeks in theaters, and Christopher Robin, which added $6.3 million for a domestic total of $77.6 million. Fallout continues to perform better than Mission: Impossible II, the reigning M:I franchise leader, making it likely that the aging-Tom-Cruise-runs-really-fast-spy-movie will become the most successful in the history of Tom-Cruise-runs-really-fast-spy-movies.
Fallout isn’t the only thriller out there, however, and that brings us to the lovely lands of limited release. Searching, the John Cho-fronted internet mystery from director Aneesh Chaganty, brought in an average of $40,000 per screen on only nine screens. The film is set to expand to nationwide release this weekend, but it’s also a film that benefits from repeat viewings, so don’t be surprised if audiences return to see what little hints they can find tucked in the corners of Cho’s browser windows.
For more detailed numbers, visit Box Office Mojo.