Three big event movies –Illumination/Universal’s Sing 2, Warner Bros’ Matrix Resurrections, and 20th Century Studios’ The King’s Man– were no match for Sony’s Spider-Man: No Way Home which continued to dominate Wednesday with an amazing $27.8M. The Jon Watts-directed MCU title has a running U.S/Canadian total of $356.5M over six days, which is the third best for that range after Avengers: Endgame ($452.3M) and Star Wars: Force Awakens ($363.4M). As of right now, No Way Home is pacing behind Force Awakens by -2%.
For the most part, low Wednesday openings before Christmas are par for the course, especially with a big movie like Spider-Man in the marketplace. Sing 2‘s $8M opening at 3,892 theaters, though 27% off from the $11M Wednesday opening of its first chapter in 2016 when Star Wars: Rogue One was in theaters, is still a very good start, besting such family driven Wednesday debuts as Mary Poppins Returns ($4.7M, 3-day $23.5M, 5-day $32.3M) and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle ($7.2M, $36.1M 3-day, $52.8M 5-day+previews). Sing 2 should reach its 5-day projection of $42M-$50M, a very good start. In the same breath, 5-days is an eternity for all distributors to predict in this Covid-day-and-age. Sing 2 gets an A+ from CinemaScore audiences and currently is 67% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.
Warner Bros./Village Roadshow’s Matrix Resurrections came in at $6.4M at 3,552 theaters, and the constant thought on the top of analysts heads this week will be how much HBO Max stole from the theatrical till. That result for the sequel is above the opening Wednesday of 1999’s The Matrix ($4.8M at 2,704 theaters, 3-day $27.7M, 5-day $37.3M) and 2003’s The Matrix Reloaded, which drew ($5M at 2,750 theaters), but it’s also higher than the Wednesday start of the sci-fi Jennifer Lawrence-Chris Pratt Village Roadshow/Sony movie Passengers which made $4.1M, before a $14.8M 3-day, and 5 day of $22.1M. That movie, which of course was on a theatrical window, made it to $100M. Outlook right now for Matrix Resurrections is $20M over 3-days, $35M over 5. Matrix Revolutions stills holds the franchise record for the best Wednesday opening with $24.3M.
Matrix Resurrections gets a B-, the lowest audience score of any Matrix movie after the first movie’s A-, The Matrix Reloaded‘s B+ and The Matrix Revolutions’ B-. The Rotten Tomatoes score for Matrix Resurrections is 69% fresh, which is substantially above Matrix Revolutions’ 35% Rotten, and third behind Matrix‘s 88% certified fresh and Matrix Reloaded‘s 73% certified fresh.
20th Century Studios/Disney’s The King’s Man earned $2.3M on Wednesday at 3,175 theaters. The Matthew Vaughn directed prequel in The Kingsmen series notched a B+ Cinemascore. That should get the movie to the single digits over 3-days and just over $10M for five days; not very big, but alas, it’s a period action film, not contemporary like its first two installments. King’s Man Wednesday opening is lower than Assassin’s Creed‘s $4.6M, which was another very expensive older-guy skewing movie which opened over Christmas with another Star Wars movie on the marquee, that being Star Wars: Rogue One. Assassin’s Creed, which was a feature take on the videogame, saw a $10.2M 3-day and $17.7M 5-day.
Let’s give all these new movies some time to breath as business typically picks up on Christmas and beyond. As the old box office adage goes, business is always product-driven.