With the focus of most of the internet's weekend box office round-ups firmly on the US, the narrative this week is the resounding success of Sony's animated Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse. Further afield, however, it's a different story. Aquaman hasn't yet opened Stateside, and in territories where it has, it's a ticket tidal wave. Or a tidal ticket wave. It's selling a lot of tickets.
Standard business first then, and it's a record-breaking swing into action for Into The Spiderverse, which took a healthy $35.4m (rising to $56.4m worldwide), and ended Ralph Breaks The Internet's run at the top. Sony's multiverse Spider-saga also now officially holds the record for the biggest December opening weekend for an animated movie, toppling Sing from that particular perch.
Older audiences, however, turned out in their droves for Clint Eastwood's The Mule, the veteran actor-director's first role in front of the camera for six years. The drug-running drama gave him his third strongest ever opening weekend with $17.2m, behind only Sully and Space Cowboys. Thanks, grey dollar!
Back to animation for third and fourth places, with The Grinch and the aforementioned Ralph sequel hanging onto the top five from previous weeks, at $11.5m and $9.6m respectively. Which means that this week's only other new release in the top ten is Mortal Engines, tanking to fifth place and contributing only a further $7.5m to a worldwide tally that now stands at $42.3m. For a film that cost north of $100m to produce, that is not good news.
Creed II was sixth with $5.3m; Bohemian Rhapsody – now officially the most successful music biopic ever – was seventh with a further $4.1m; Instant Family was eighth with $3.7m; Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald was ninth with $3.6m; and Green Book came in tenth with $2.8m.
But all of the above paled in comparison to Aquaman's performance in the rest of the world. Already in its second week of release in China, having raked in $189.2m there so far, it's now speared a further $71.8m across its newest territories: $6.5m of that from the UK. We'll see what the US adds to that tally when it opens there on December 21, but it's looking like a mighty Christmas for James Wan, Jason Momoa and their aquatic company. Warner/DC's first billion?
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