The first weekend after Oscar nominations were announced belongs to 20th Century Fox, as three of its nominated titles have made the top 10 at the box office, while the studio’s new release, “Maze Runner: The Death Cure,” has taken over the No. 1 spot from “Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle.”
Starring Dylan O’Brien and directed by Wes Ball, the final installment in the “Maze Runner” trilogy made $8.4 million on Friday — including $1.5 million in Thursday previews — and is estimated to open to $22-23 million from 3,787 screens. The film has received mixed reviews from critics and audiences, earning a 43 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes but doing better with opening night crowds with a B+ on CinemaScore.
While “Jumanji”‘s reign atop the box office charts has come to an end, Sony will still be very pleased by the estimated $15.5 million it made in its sixth weekend. That’s because, with a domestic total of $337.5 million, “Jumanji” has now passed the latest installment in Sony’s most valuable franchise, “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” becoming the fourth highest-grossing domestic release in studio history and becoming one of the top 5 highest grossing 2017 releases, as well. The film will also pass $800 million worldwide, putting it past “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” to become one of the top 10 highest-grossing global releases of last year.
In third is the Christian Bale western “Hostiles,” which is distributed by Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios and goes wide this weekend to 2,815 screens after making $1.8 million in limited release. Though the film failed to get any Oscar nominations, it is beating both trackers’ expectations and all Oscar contenders this weekend with an estimated opening weekend of $9.8 million. It has also earned a solid reception with a 72 percent RT rating and a B on CinemaScore.
In fourth is Fox’s “The Greatest Showman,” which refuses to drop out of the top 5 and may even pass “Hostiles” by Sunday’s end with a current weekend estimate of $9.3 million. The film received a nomination for Best Original Song for its Golden Globe-winning number “This Is Me,” but it is the film’s unstoppable word of mouth that has brought it to an estimated domestic total of $126 million, edging it closer to “La La Land” and its $151 million.
Completing the top five is another Fox title, “The Post,” which only earned two Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Actress for Meryl Streep, but is doing just fine with $8.9 million in its third weekend wide. Meanwhile, Fox’s indie wing, Fox Searchlight, has responded to the Academy giving “The Shape of Water” 13 nominations by expanding it to 1,854 screens for its widest weekend yet. Audiences have responded by placing Guillermo del Toro’s romance into ninth place for the weekend with an estimated $5.5 million.