While the industry held its breath awaiting Friday's release of “Dune: Part Two,” North American moviegoers continued to largely ignore new releases.
Last week’s No. 1 movie, Paramount’s “Bob Marley: One Love,” held onto the top spot with $13.5 million, according to estimates from market research firm Comscore, while anime stalwart “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba — to the Hashira Training” from Sony and Crunchyroll, lived up to expectations, earning $11.6 million in its debut and finishing in second place.
However, two higher-profile releases, Lionsgate's third-place “Ordinary Angels,” starring Hilary Swank, and Ethan Coen's eighth-place “Drive-Away Dolls,” from Focus Features, they failed to find large audiences, grossing $6.5 million and $2.4 million. respectively.
“One Love,” starring Kingsley Ben-Adir as the reggae legend, dropped a respectable 51% from its debut to reach $71.2 million domestically and crossed the $100 million mark globally .
In fourth place, Columbia Pictures' disappointing “Madame Web” earned a projected $6 million in its second weekend for a total domestic gross of $35.4 million. Universal's animated hit “Migration” rounds out the top five in its 10th weekend with $3 million and a domestic cume of $120 million.
“Argylle” from Universal and Apple Originals earned $2.8 million in its fourth weekend for a domestic total of $41.7 million. Warner Bros.' “Wonka” finished seventh in its 11th weekend, grossing $2.5 million and raising its North American total to $214.5 million.
Opening exclusively in New York and Los Angeles, Sideshow and Janus Films' release of Nuri Bilge Ceylan's “About Dry Grasses” grossed approximately $14,400 with an average of $4,800 per screen despite its runtime of more than three hours, which which limited the number of daily screenings.
The highly anticipated “Dune: Part Two” carries a heavy load next week, but it has a strong critical response with a 97% rating on review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes. It is followed by “Dune: Part One,” which grossed $41 million domestically in its opening weekend of 2021 en route to a worldwide cume of more than $400 million and six Academy Awards.
