‘The Rhythm Section’ Flops with $2.8 Mil; ‘Bad Boys For Life’ Passes $150 Mil Mark

Quiet as Super Bowl weekend usually is for Movies, it’s Sony’s “Bad Boys For Life” that makes the most noise, holding on to the top box office spot for a third consecutive week. Taking around $17.4M (as of Saturday) the film not only looks set to pass $150M in the US, but its widely unpredicted success appears to have convinced Sony to green light a fourth film in the franchise. In fact the films worldwide success has convinced opposing studio Warner Bros to dust off their own cop franchise “Lethal Weapon” with rumors hot that a fifth film starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover is on the way.

Landing in second this week and making one final push before next weeks Oscars is Best a picture front runner “1917”. Universal’s war epic appears to have its eyes on at least 5/6 awards come Sunday including Best Director for Sam Mendes. Figures wise the film took in a respectable $9.4M, pushing its total past $119M. Though at this point Universal will have their hearts set on repeating their best picture success of last year with “Green Book”.

Solid in third is another a Universal picture, however an undoubted underachiever. Their Robert Downey Jr starring “Dolittle” managed around $8M in its third weekend, pushing its total to a measly $55M, however the studio has known for weeks now that they are going to have to accept a huge loss on the remake.

Fourth place will be decided later tonight when the actuals are released, as Guy Ritchie and STX’s “The Gentlemen” looks to push “Jumanji: The Next Level” out the top four for the first time since its December release. Saturday estimates have the films neck and neck at around $5.8 and $6M respectively.

Elsewhere this week, new releases “The Rhythm Section” and “Gretel & Hansel” both fell below expectations; however, it’s Paramount’s Blake Lively led spy thriller that suffered the most. Opening in over 3000 locations, the film managed only $2.9M, appearing to land the film only just inside the top 10. This marks a disappointing start for a film with a long road to the screen following production delays. It remains to be seen if its international tally could claw back any of the rumored $50M budget of the film. Meanwhile Orion’s fantasy flick landed slightly below expectations with around $5.7M from near enough the same amount of locations, whilst the film did perform better than expected with critics, sitting at around 60% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Next week should see the biggest opening weekend of the year so far, with Warner Bros “Birds of Prey” looking to capitalize on good early reactions and land a huge opening weekend. Starring Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn from “Suicide Squad” the studio will be hoping to get close, or even surpass the $133M opening of David Ayer’s film from 2016.

1. Bad Boys For Life – $17.7M ($148M Overall)

2. 1917 – $9.7M ($119M)

3. Dolittle – $7.7M ($55M)

4. Gretel and Hansel – $6.1M

5. The Gentlemen – $6.01M ($20M)

6. Jumanji: The Next Level – $6M ($291M)

7. Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker – $3.2M ($507M)

8. The Turning – $3.1M ($11.7M)

9. Little Women – $3M ($99M)

10. The Rhythm Section – $2.8M