January dumping ground very visible in this weekend’s box office tally

January is typically a rough time for new releases, and the box office was January-ing particularly hard this past weekend. While Philly, Kansas City, and Taylor Swift were celebrating their tickets to the Super Bowl, their respective fans weren’t buying tickets to the movies. This weekend’s films brought in $70.2 million across the board, per Deadline, which is about $15.7 million more than this time last year, but still pennies compared to more lucrative pages on the calendar. (For a little perspective, Deadpool & Wolverine, the best opening of 2024, brought in $211 million in its opening weekend alone.)

If the numbers aren’t clicking, the leading film this past weekend was Flight Risk, a Mel Gibson-directed thriller starring Mark Wahlberg as a plane terrorist. Flight Risk managed a shaky take off of $12 million, which was still enough to land it at the top of the board. While it may not be a win for movies in general, it is a win for Lionsgate, which nets their second number one film of the year, after Den Of Thieves 2: Pantera earlier this month. That was their first since Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes in November-early December 2023. 

This weekend’s other opening, Steven Soderbergh’s ghostly Presence, only rustled up $3.4 million. It’s not all doom and gloom for the Lucy Liu-led horror, however. The film was reportedly shot for just $2 million in 11 days, which means it made up its budget and then some in just one weekend. Now that’s something to scream about.

You can check out the rest of the top 10, via Box Office Mojo, below:

1. Flight Risk, $12,000,000
2. Mufasa: The Lion King, $8,700,000
3. One Of Them Days, $8,000,115
4. Sonic the Hedgehog 3, $5,500,000
5. Moana 2, $4,300,000
6. Presence, $3,415,000
7. Wolf Man, $3,400,290
8. A Complete Unknown, $3,100,000
9. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, $3,000,000
10. The Brutalist, $2,873,057