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Refresh for latest…: Sony’s Bad Boys For Life kept the joyride going in its sophomore session at the international box office. The weekend was worth $42M in 58 markets for an offshore cume of $95M and bringing global to $215M. The overseas drop was 39% in the holdover hubs.
Following last week’s debut, the well-received Will Smith/Martin Lawrence threequel collared another record as the biggest opening of the 25-year-old franchise in the new group of 19 markets. Among No. 1 starts were Russia, France and Netherlands. The UK leads all play at $10.7M to date. Brazil, Japan and Italy are still on deck through next month.
Continuing to capitalize on its 10 Oscar nominations (and now a DGA top prize for director Sam Mendes) Amblin/Universal’s 1917 made a collective $23.7M from 50 overseas markets this frame. The offshore total is about to pass $100M while globally the war drama has sped across the $200M line.
Universal’s Dolittle is finding some takers overseas with a $13.2M session in 55 markets for $46.4M to date. The offshore cume is in line with Cinderella, 11% below Maleficent and 61% over Alice Through The Looking Glass at the same point in release. The expensive movie still has several majors to come and has grossed $91.1M globally. Whether Dolittle‘s China date in February (as well as other Hollywood pics) is affected by the coronavirus epidemic is not yet clear (see more re China below).
Elsewhere, Disney/Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker crossed $500M domestically, becoming only the 15th film ever to the milestone. With $1.046B global, it is the No. 9 worldwide release of 2019. With $1.419B+ global, Disney Animation’s Frozen 2 has topped Avengers: Age Of Ultron ($1.404B) to become the No. 10 highest grossing release of all time worldwide.
Frozen 2 missed out on an Oscar nomination in the Animated Feature category, but its stablemate Jojo Rabbit from Searchlight, is making hay from the six nods it received. Taika Waititi’s comedy has now grossed $54M globally with several key international markets to come. It dropped just 19% from last weekend in the already opened hubs.
Another Oscar nominee, Sony’s Little Women is marching towards $150M worldwide with 50% of the overseas markets still to come. The global cume is now $147M, of that $53M is from offshore. The weekend was $5.6M in 27 markets.
Also worth a mention, Universal’s screecher Cats snagged older audiences in its Japan opening for a No. 1 $3.54M bow at 379 locations. That’s on par with Les Misérables and ahead of Mary Poppins Returns, A Star Is Born and Mamma Mia 2.
There’s notable news about what didn’t happen at the international box office this weekend. With the cancellation of Chinese New Year films (both at home and abroad) amid the escalating and devastating coronavirus epidemic, there were no record-breaking openings as had previously been expected in the Middle Kingdom. On Thursday last week, it emerged that all local film releases scheduled for the highly lucrative period were pulled. As we detailed at the time about the prudent move by authorities to stave off the potential spread of the deadly disease and stem the human tragedy, this is expected to mean a $1B+ blow to global box office for 2020.
Last year’s full New Year holiday, which began on Tuesday February 5, brought in about RMB 5.8B ($836M) in China with the month of February achieving a benchmark RMB 11.1B ($1.6B). This year, the holiday frame was to begin on Saturday January 25. So, although the comparison is not apples-to-apples, if we look at just the first full weekend of 2018, the Top 5 CNY entries grossed a combined $345.5M. Through today, collective box office for the Top 5 films that may have screened in a handful of cinemas for at least part of the weekend is unclear as we are told China box office reporting is, understandably, unreliable at the moment and refunds will still need to be issued. We will report back as more information becomes available.
Breakdowns on the films above and more are being updated below.
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