It was a good weekend for the Saw franchise as the latest entry, Spiral, topped the US box office with an estimated $8.7M debut.
The ninth entry in the long-running saga, now seventeen years running and almost $1B grossed, amassed an average of $3,103 per-screen average in 2,811 theatres in its opening weekend. Whilst $8.7M is the weakest opening for the franchise, in times when many cinemas in North America are still closed this was a solid opening for an R-rated movie.
Spiral opens in the UK and other international territories from today.
Coming in second this week is last week’s number one, Wrath of Man. The action-thriller, from The United Artists, added a further $3.7M at the domestic box office, a drop of -55% from the previous weekend. Its two-week total now sits at $14.6M. Internationally, the film has now raked in $41.4M for a combined worldwide gross of $56M.
Opening in a disappointing third place is Angelina Jolie’s new survival thriller Those Who Wish Me Dead. The Warner Bros. release opened with a lukewarm $2.8M, an average $878 per-screen from 3,188 theatres. It’s worth noting the film did also simultaneously release on WarnerMedia streaming platform HBO Max, but that hasn’t stopped other WB Pictures releases from performing well at the box office. Those Who Wish Me Dead also opened in 33 international territories where it brought in a tepid $1.2M.
Sitting in fourth place this week is FUNimation Entertainment’s Demon Slayer: Mugen Train, which snagged just under $1.8M in its fourth weekend in North America. The anime adventure dropped a further -42% from the previous frame. The film has outperformed all expectation internationally, where its $395.7M total dwarfs its $41.9M domestic tally. Its cumulative worldwide gross to date now stands at $437.6M, which makes it the highest-grossing anime film of all time.
Rounding out the Top Five again was Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon. In its eleventh week, the PG-rated computer-animated adventure padded its take with $1.7M domestically. Overseas, Raya has grossed $61.7M to date, pushing its current worldwide total to $107.8M.
Sitting outside the top five this week is Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead which received a limited theatrical run prior to its May 21 debut on Netflix. the streamer doesn’t usually release box office numbers but expert analysts put the zombie action-movie’s gross somewhere around $800k.
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