Director Jon M Chu’s Crazy Rich Asians was the number one film at the box office this past weekend, pulling in $25 million in ticket sales.
When compared to last weekend’s take, that represents a second-weekend drop off of only 6%. When second week totals usual drop in the 35 to 60% range, Crazy Rich Asians‘ ability to hold onto nearly all of its opening weekend gross is almost unheard of. When you do see this kind of staying power it is in the week between Christmas and New Year’s, never during late August, what is often times considered the doldrums of the summer movie season.
But the Warner Brothers release wasn’t the only film from the studio on the box office charts this weekend. Their action film The Meg, featuring Jason Staitham squaring off against a prehistoric shark, was the number two ticket seller, with $13 million over the past three days. That raises the film’s total domestic take to $105.3 million.
Meanwhile, the weekend’s highest profile opening The Happytime Murders, came in at number three with director Brian Henson’s raunchy puppet noir comedy bringing in a disappointing $10 million at the box office. Despite some strong initial buzz when its first trailer was released a few months back, it appears that the distributors didn’t follow up on that as none of the film’s human stars made the usual promotional rounds for the film. (Star Melissa McCarthy is reportedly finishing work on the comedy Superintelligence for New Line.) Neither McCarthy nor co-star Elizabeth Banks had any mention of the film no their social media this weekend, which is a statement in itself. Poor reviews and bad word of mouth – it received a C minus Cinemascore in a survey of audiences done on Friday evening – probably combined to keep ticket buyers away across the weekend.
