It took an enormously deadly global pandemic that still might get worse before it gets better, the complete shutdown of the entire nation for a period of several months, and every big 2020 movie either getting bumped to next year or dumped onto streaming services, but goddamn it, The New Mutants is the number one movie in America. They freakin’ did it. Professor Xavier’s dream has been achieved, and Josh Boone’s eternally delayed, endlessly reshot, creator-forgetting, character white-washing X-Men spin-off made $7 million in its opening weekend.
Of course, it’s hard to really celebrate this honor given the circumstances behind how it was achieved, but at least The New Mutants went up against some (relatively) real competition. In second place this past weekend was the Russell Crowe road-rage romp Unhinged, adding another $2.6 million to its take for a total of nearly $9 million over the last few weeks, which isn’t a ton of money but at least it’s more than the movie would’ve made if theaters had remained closed (shrug emoji). In third place was Bill & Ted Face The Music, which you can watch on-demand at home, at just over $1 million. That one is even less defensible, since you can watch it on-demand at home without risking COVID transmission, but whatever. Some people are diehard Wyld Stallyns fans and they needed to see Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter on the big screen again after all these years.
The rest of the top 10 all made less than $1 million, which means they don’t deserve a few chatty sentences to contextualize what they’re about or how they performed. In order: The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge On The Run ($604,000), The Personal History Of David Copperfield ($520,000), Words On Bathroom Walls ($453,360), Cut Throat City ($161,245), Peninsula ($92, 177), and lastly The Burnt Orange Heresy ($1,383). Quick counters in the audience may have noticed something unusual here, and yes, this week’s top 10 movies only consisted of nine movies. That’s just how many movies there are. Shrug emoji.
For more detailed analysis of this weekend’s box office numbers, head over to Box Office Mojo.