Critical and audience reception for Universal’s “Glass” hasn’t been as high as it was for its 2017 predecessor “Split,” but M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film is still on pace for a $47 million 4-day opening, which would be the third-highest opening on Martin Luther King Jr. weekend in industry history.
The MLK opening record belongs to “American Sniper” with $107.2 million, while No. 2 is “Ride Along” with $48.6 million and “Cloverfield” sits at No. 3 with $46.1 million. On the 3-day side, “Glass” is seeing an opening weekend consistent with “Split,” earning $40.5 million from Friday-Sunday, compared to $40 million for Kevin Crumb’s debut.
While independent trackers had projected a much higher opening for “Glass” — some estimates reached as high as $68 million — this is still a positive result for Universal after a December in which two of its films, “Mortal Engines” and “Welcome to Marwen,” bombed hard at the box office. “Glass” was made at a much cheaper budget than those films, as the movie has already made back its $20 million production budget.
The question now is how the word of mouth will translate into audience interest in the weeks ahead. While critics generally praised “Split” with a 76 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, “Glass” got a much more negative reception at just 35 percent. Audience polls by CinemaScore weren’t nearly as bad, though, earning a B compared to a B+ for “Split,” which only dropped 36 percent in its second weekend. “Glass” has the advantage of not facing any serious competition until “The Lego Movie 2” on Feb. 8, but it still remains to be seen whether the film’s polarizing twist will intrigue or scare off potential moviegoers.
In second place this weekend is STX/Lantern Entertainment’s “The Upside,” which is holding strong with a $15 million 3-day/$19.5 million 4-day estimate on its second weekend, just a 23 percent drop from its $20.5 million opening. The Bryan Cranston/Kevin Hart film is on pace to join the two “Bad Moms” films among STX’s top 3 highest grossing domestic releases ever.
Warner Bros.’ “Aquaman” is in third with a $12.4 million 4-day estimate, pushing its domestic total to $306 million. Last week, the DC film became WB’s first billion-dollar hit since 2012.
In fourth is the Funimation anime film “Dragon Ball Super: Broly,” which was released on 470 screens and is estimated for a 4-day total of $10.7 million. Sony’s “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” completes the top 5 with $10 million in its sixth weekend, pushing its total to $161 million.
Farther down the charts, Disney’s “Mary Poppins Returns” passed the domestic total of “La La Land” this past week, taking seventh this weekend with an estimated $6.7 million and bringing its total to $158.7 million. The musical is now closing in on the domestic total of “The Greatest Showman,” which made $174 million last year. Meanwhile, another musically-charged film, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” will pass $200 million domestic after 12 weekends in theaters, adding just under $3 million on this extended weekend.