After five weekends atop the box office, Avatar: Fire and Ash finally gave up the top spot. This week, the honor went to the new Chris Pratt movie, Mercy. Unfortunately, thanks to a general sense of apathy towards the film, as well as a historic winter snowstorm across the United States, Mercy’s victory isn’t an indicator of overall financial success. Let’s dive into the numbers, shall we?
Generally, the month of January is dominated by holdovers, but there’s always room for a movie to breakout. Nobody expects a January release to set the world on fire, but the new releases this month really underwhelmed. January is the month that brought us Taken, The Book of Eli, One of Them Days, M3GAN, and plenty of other surprise hits. Unfortunately, that’s just not happening this year.
Mercy won the weekend with $11.1 million. With a budget of $60 million, that’s nothing to write home about. At least it’s a #1 opening, which is a nice symbolic feather in star Chris Pratt’s cap. I suppose there’s a chance this one holds on well enough in the coming weeks, but it will take quite an effort to bring this one across $30 million.
In second place, we find Avatar: Fire and Ash, which fell 51% in its sixth weekend, bringing in $7 million. The film’s total stands at $378 million, and a final total in excess of $400 million is still possible with a little luck. Worldwide, the film is at an astounding $1.37 billion. While that’s pretty far behind the $2.3 billion total of its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water, it’s still a friggin’ billion dollar movie. You have to be a special kind of dingleberry to complain about the financial performance of a billion dollar movie.
Zootopia 2 is hanging in there in third place, bringing in $5.7 million for the weekend and finally crossing the $400 million threshold domestically. Worldwide, the film’s total stands at a ridiculous $1.74 billion. Disney may have struggled somewhat with its MCU movies last year, but between Avatar and Zootopia 2, the House of Mouse certainly nailed the landing, ending 2025 with one heck of a bang.
In fourth place, The Housemaid continues to prove its status as a major sleeper hit. In its sixth weekend, the film brought in $4.2 million and bringing its total to $115 million domestic, and $217 million worldwide. Fifth place is where we find the decomposing corpse of 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, which fell a shocking 71% in its second weekend, ringing up just $3.6 million for an anemic 10-day total of just $20.75 million. I honestly don’t know why this movie is bombing so hard, especially since the last movie rocked and managed to bring in a solid $70 million domestically. As it currently stands, this sequel will be lucky to finish with $30 million, which is what 28 Years Later made in its opening weekend.
The last major new release of the weekend can be found in seventh place, with the $3.2 million opening for Return to Silent Hill. The original 2006 Silent Hill film, based on the classic Konami video game series, was a middling hit, grossing $100 million worldwide from a budget of $50 million, but the ill-advised 2012 sequel crashed and burned with critics and audiences. While the new film brings back original director Christophe Gans and adapts the fan-favorite Silent Hill 2, the whole thing came across to franchise fans as ‘too little, too late.’ Maybe this one will have a long shelf life on home video and streaming before being reappraised as a forgotten cult classic, but I wouldn’t count on it. Maybe Silent Hill is best left to the realm of video games.
While technically split across three films, the Extended Cuts of the Lord of the Rings movies made a combined $5.2 million this weekend. Over two weeks, the trilogy has raked in $13.8 million in its latest victory lap. The upcoming “The Hunt for Gollum” is still a major wildcard, but there’s clearly still a lot of love for Middle-Earth and its Hobbit, Elf, and wizard denizens.
Next week, we have Sam Raimi’s Send Help, which is January’s last chance at a major hit. I’m super excited for this one, but I’m curious to see if it’s got potential for a $20 million opening.
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