THE BATMAN takes the weekend box office for the third week in a row by grossing $36.8M and holding up very well once again with a 45% drop from the prior weekend. The Robert Pattinson entry in the franchise has now grossed $300M in its first seventeen days of release and is on track to gross approximately $360M from its theatrical run.
That would make this year’s BATMAN the third highest-grossing chapter in the franchise, well ahead of 2016’s BATMAN VERSUS SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE that grossed $330M. Only THE DARK NIGHT (2008) with $533M and THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (2012) with $448M have done better at the box office. With both critics and audiences loving the Matt Reeves-directed film, Warner Bros., Reeves and Pattinson can’t get back into production fast enough to satisfy the demand from BATMAN fans.
Crunchyroll/Funimation’s anime adventure JUJUTSU KAISEN O finished second, with a $17.7M gross, exceeding pre-release projections from most box office prognosticators. This result was boosted by a very healthy $2.8M coming in from Thursday night preview screenings. This strong start appears to have JUJUTSU KAISEN O on track to achieve similar results to those from DEMON SLAYER, which generated $49M over its total theatrical run which began on 4/23/21.
For the second straight weekend, the North American box office was lifted by results from a non-traditional feature and distributor. Last week, it was the BTS concert film PERMISSION TO DANCE ON STAGE from Trafalgar Releasing, and this week it was the anime JUJUTSU KAISEN O from Crunchyroll/Funimation.
UNCHARTED came in third place with a gross of $8.6M, dropping only 14% from the prior weekend. This brings the total gross for UNCHARTED to $ and solidifies its place as the third highest-grossing film of the quarter, trailing only THE BATMAN and Q1 results from SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME. The other new films to open wide (at over 1,000 locations) were A24’s X and Focus Features’ THE OUTFIT, which only managed to earn $4.4M and $1.5M and finish fourth and eighth respectively. All pictures in the release this weekend generated an estimated $90M, which was 65% of the earnings from the same weekend in 2019.
