For “Bad Boys for Life,” the third weekend was the charm. Just like the second was. And the first.
The third film in the action-comedy franchise, which stars Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, easily led the box office this weekend, bringing in an estimated $17.7 million in domestic ticket sales. It was the film’s third weekend in theaters and third weekend in the top spot; its cumulative domestic sales now stand at around $148.1 million. “Bad Boys for Life” has made an additional $142.7 million overseas according to Sony, the film’s distributor.
This weekend’s two newcomers did far less well.
“Gretel & Hansel” (United Artists), an eerie rethink of a Grimm fairy tale, opened this weekend to an estimated $6.1 million in domestic sales. That’s weak but not a disaster for a relatively low-budget thriller, and was at least enough to land the movie in the top five. (Estimates have it in fourth place.)
Directed by Osgood Perkins, who has made somewhat of a name for himself on the back of two low-budget, atmospheric horror movies, “Gretel & Hansel” keeps the basic setup of the fairy tale that its name is a play on. The movie, which notched middling reviews (it currently holds a 56 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes) centers on two siblings (played by Sophia Lillis and Sammy Leakey) who find themselves lured into the woodland cottage of an old, malevolent woman (Alice Krige).
[Read our critic’s review of “Gretel & Hansel.”]
Still, “Gretel & Hansel” did better than this weekend’s other newcomer. That would be Paramount’s “The Rhythm Section,” an action movie that managed just $2.8 million in estimated domestic sales this weekend — a paltry amount next to the movie’s reported $50 million budget. It was only the tenth highest-grossing movie in domestic theaters this weekend according to Comscore, which compiles box office data.
“The Rhythm Section” stars Blake Lively as a woman tracking down the people responsible for a plane crash that killed her family. (She gets some assistance from an English spy played by Jude Law.) The film was directed by Reed Morano (“The Handmaid’s Tale”) from a screenplay by Mark Burnell, upon whose 1999 novel the movie is based. The film was met with a weak critical response (its current Rotten Tomatoes score: 33 percent fresh).
[Read our critic’s review of “The Rhythm Section.”]
Apart from “Gretel & Hansel,” the top five movies this weekend were all holdovers. Second place went to Universal’s World War I movie “1917,” the best picture front-runner which sold an estimated $9.7 million in tickets this weekend, its fourth in wide release. “Dolittle,” a comedy also distributed by Universal, landed in third with about $7.7 million this weekend, its third in theaters. And STXfilms’s week-old action comedy “The Gentlemen,” from the director Guy Ritchie, sold an estimated $6 million in tickets this weekend. Either that movie or “Gretel & Hansel” could land in fourth place when final counts are made on Monday, though estimates show “Gretel & Hansel” ahead.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
