'Violent Night' takes a swing, on another cinema weekend in doldrums
Marvel's (NYSE:DIS) Black Panther: Wakanda Forever ruled for a fourth straight weekend at the cinema box office, though a holiday-themed action comedy looked to use a pre-Christmas slowdown to make a challenge.
The Black Panther sequel lost more than 61% of last week's business to land at $17.5M, good enough for a fourth weekend on top, and bringing its domestic total to $393.7M - which makes it the third-highest domestic grosser of the year, with fellow Marvel film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness within sight at No. 2 ($411.3M gross).
Wakanda Forever has added another $339.3M internationally to add up to a worldwide total of $733M.
That can't be said for Disney's (DIS) Strange World, which flopped with a Thanksgiving weekend opening and then gave up another 58% of its take in a second weekend. It drew just $5.1M and its cumulative domestic total inched to $25.7M.
It was surpassed by Universal's (NASDAQ:CMCSA) Violent Night, which grossed $13.5M in nearly 3,700 theaters. The film stars Stranger Things' David Harbour as a Santa Claus foiling a Christmas mansion heist.
Rounding out the top five were The Menu (DIS) with $3.5M, and Devotion (NYSE:SONY), with $2.7M. But as those numbers indicate, the industry weekend box office landed at just under $53 domestically, one of the year's worst weekends - with little relief on the calendar until Avatar: The Way of Water (DIS) lands Dec. 16.
Cinema tickers: AMC Entertainment (NYSE:AMC); Cineworld (OTCPK:CNNWQ); Cinemark (CNK); (IMAX); Marcus (MCS); Reading International (RDI); Cineplex (CGX:CA); National CineMedia (NCMI).