Box Office Week: For third week in a row Jumanji: WTTJ is #1 with $20M. 12 Strong opens to solid #2 with $16.5M and Den of Thieves opens decent at #3 with $15.2M. Meanwhile domestically The Last Jedi passes $600M, Coco pass $200M, The Greatest Showman and Pitch Perfect 3 pass $100M.

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #
1	Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle	$20,040,000	$767,785,148	5
2	12 Strong	$16,500,000	$16,500,000	1
3	Den of Thieves	$15,320,000	$15,320,000	1
4	The Post	$12,150,000	$55,091,402	5
5	The Greatest Showman	$11,000,000	$231,480,607	5

Notable Box Office Stories:

• Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle - You know it would be nice if something else was #1 next week just because my god I'm running out of stuff to discuss. This week the film dropped just 28.7% coming in #1 for its third weekend in a row (and its fifth week overall) with $20M. The film has now surpassed $300M domestic and become the 7th highest grossing film of 2017, surpassing Thor: Ragnarok despite opening more than $85M less than that mega hit. The film is just a monster in terms of legs, nearing an insane 9x multiplier (Wonder Woman pulled a 4x multiplier and was considered a huge hit in terms of staying power). This film is just unstoppable, becoming the go to choice for an entire month while certain other hits have faded away (obviously I'm talking Downsizing /s). It's also surpassed $750M worldwide surpassing the worldwide gross of hits like Logan and IT. While it hasn't reached quite the same heights of Avatar no film has really utilized the strength of the winter season this well since Avatar with each weekend acted like an opening weekend with no sign of slowing down. Finally some real competition is coming with 15:17 to Paris and Fifty Shades Freed in February, but that still weeks away and plays to a more adult audience. I'm sorry but at some point you just have to stand back in awe. I give in, Jumanji you win. You have beaten me and everyone else. I'm just going to sit back and watch your 10th victory lap.

• 12 Strong - Usually when a film is in development hell for 5 years and changes its name just months before release and is released in the dead of January you have a grade-A megabomb on your hands but for once all that scrambling actually seems to have saved 12 Strong which opened to a solid $16.5M at #2, just above expectations. The film originally titled Horse Soldiers until about November was announced in 2011 but wasn't shot until 2016 by first time director Nicolai Fuglsig. The film's original marketing focused much harder on the whole soldiers on horses thing but after some terrible marketing surveys they changed the title to 12 Strong, pushing the horse stuff to the subtitle and rebranding the film to focus on the first unit to enter Afghanistan after 9/11. It was a smart move trying to appeal to the older, American Sniper crowd that seems to have worked. The film played to a crowd that was 79% over the age of 25 and they gave it an A on Cinemascore which should give some good legs in the coming weeks. With a budget of $30M the film should eek out a solid profit, not bad for something at the start of the year looked to perform so badly it would have to be considered for a government bailout.

• Den of Thieves - Never count out Gerard as his latest shoot 'em up opened far above the usual STX standards and expectations opening in the double digits with $15.3M at #3. Going into the weekend it seemed STX expected to have a real stinker, predicting a sub $10M opening. Actually though it may not really be Gerard to thank for the minor success as 30% of the audience was black. Perhaps Gerard has an amazing black audience following but more likely the push was for 50 Cent who has his first lead in a theatrical film in a while as well as O'Shea Jackson, the first major release of his since Straight Outta Compton (yes he was great in Ingrid Goes West but that topped out in less than 700 theaters and made less than Den of Thieves made opening day). We've seen a lot of enthusiasm the last few years from black audiences who are fiercely loyal and tend to frankly not be well polled by early predictors. It will be interesting then to see where Black Panther lands opening weekend, but in the meantime Den of Thieves should hold well even with a B+ Cinemascore. It's not going to turn STX into a powerhouse but it is keeping the company on track and another good example of how desperately polling systems need to find ways to reach new expanding audiences.

• Forever My Girl - Remember Nicholas Sparks and how he dominated romantic films for the past decade? Well now that his box office dominance is behind us we are experiencing the last gasps of his certain brand of romance and their imitators. So if Forever My Girl isn't the last film in this exhausting genre it will be truly shocking as the film opened at #10 with a terrible $4.7M. There's not much to really say here other than to say this is how trends end. Usually it's an imitator dying a sad quiet death, so awful it pretty much solidifies that a trend is finally over. Farewell Nicholas Sparks romance films, I personally won't miss you...so how long until the nostalgic Nicholas Sparks reboot?

• Oscar Movie Round-up - Only a few days until the Oscar nominations are in so for now most of the films in the race didn't expand. First up is The Post which did not hold as well as I had thought dropping 37.2% to come in at #4 with $12.1M. The film doesn't seem to be translating that usual Spielberg good will into fantastic legs and with a likely shutout in major categories on Tuesday it will be tough for the film to stand out from the crowd. Surprisingly of the two big expansions this week Phantom Thread did the best, adding 800 theaters and earning $3.3M. It's surprising because director Paul Thomas Anderson has never been a box office smash, in fact his last film Inherent Vice closed to just $8M domestic. Not mention Phantom Thread's inspirations of Hitchcock and Max Ophuls aren't exactly nostalgic properties right now. It will be interesting to see how the film fairs since like most PTA films it seems to be in the low end of the pack of awards talk despite being one of the most critically beloved films of 2017. The only other expansion and the last of the Oscar hopefuls did not fair so well as Call Me By Your Name added 641 theaters but only managed to earn $1.5M. There's certainly the element of the film's openly gay content that may not be suitable for mass markets or the fact much like Phantom Thread it's a critical darling left out of most of the major races, but I think the big factor that ruined this film was time. It came out 9 weeks ago in limited and stayed in coastal cities for 5 weeks. The result is film twitter and critics moved on from the film by this point, so there was just zero momentum or sense that the film was finally hitting wide. Sony Pictures Classics banked on there being a lot more momentum from awards by this point but since there wasn't, so CMBYN was just old news by the time it was released.

Films Reddit Wants to Follow

This is a segment where we keep a weekly tally of currently showing films that aren't in the Top 5 that fellow redditors want updates on. If you'd like me to add a film to this chart, make a comment in this thread.

Title	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget	Week #
Thor: Ragnarok	$313,447,531	$851,510,421	$180M	12
Justice League	$227,576,070	$655,176,070	$300M	10
Coco	$200,727,300	$655,927,300	$175M	9
Star Wars: The Last Jedi	$604,284,476	$1,296,284,476	$200M	6

Notable Film Closings

Title	Domestic Gross	Worldwide Gross	Budget
Marshall	$10,051,659	$10,111,433	$12M

As always /r/boxoffice is a great place to share links and other conversations about box office news.

Also you can see the archive of all Box Office Week posts at /r/moviesboxoffice.

Submitted January 23, 2018 at 01:15AM by mi-16evil http://ift.tt/2F5J0Bn