America’s theater chains seem optimistic about the future, with multiple companies announcing potentially viable COVID-19 vaccines in the last few weeks, but the present is still looking decidedly grim for the industry. With the spread of the virus still completely unchecked in the U.S. and the slow drip of new releases coming to a stop, audiences seemed to be much warier of going back to movie theaters this past weekend than they have been for the last few months.
The charts are largely the same as last week, but everything is down across the board, including the number of theaters that movies are playing at, and the most profitable “new” film is yet another Disney rerelease (The Santa Clause, which came in fifth with $461,000). First place, once again, went to the Vince Vaughn body-swap thriller Freaky, which added $1.2 million to its total. It was the only film this week to crack $1 million, actually, with the number two spot going to The War With Grandpa ($733,000), number three going to Let Him Go ($710,000), and number four going to Come Play ($550,000).
Further down the list we have a handful of actual new movies, with Jackie Chan’s Vanguard coming in seventh with $400,000 and The Last Vermeer coming in ninth with just $225,000. The rest of the list is bleak, with Lin Shaye/Tobin Bell horror film The Call hitting the bottom of the ranking with $175. We didn’t forget any zeroes there, either. A couple of movies actually made less than $1,000, so hopefully those vaccines work super well and can be distributed by movie theater soda machines, because otherwise it’ll be hard to swing back from this any time soon.
For a more comprehensive look at this weekend’s box office numbers, head over to Box Office Mojo.