In addition to stealing Christmas from those overly-cheery Whos, the green meanie also took the Stateside box office crown this weekend as The Grinch topped the charts with $66 million.
Illumination's second crack at Dr. Seuss following 2012's The Lorax, this seasonal favourite with a new coat of CG paint charmed audiences enough, and had the good fortune to debut against two more adult audience-seeking movies. More animated (and Chrimbo-friendly) competition is on the way, so we'll see how well it holds up.
Bohemian Rhapsody was pushed down to second place on $30.8 million, and has just crossed the $100 million domestic milestone in its second weekend of release. Horror thriller Overlord launched with $10.1 million in third, with some dodgy reviews not seeming to help it find a big audience. In fourth we find The Nutcracker And The Four Realms still not seeing the sort of big returns Disney has usually come to expect. It took in $9.5 million. Still, the Mouse House will be happier with that than Sony will with The Girl In The Spider's Web, which ignominiously launched in fifth place and $8 million. The studio will surely be hoping for a better international result, though it has kicked off worldwide so far with just $16.3 million.
A Star Is Born slipped to sixth on $8 million, while Nobody's Fool fell to seventh with $6.5 million. Venom was down to eighth with $4.8 million, but the movie has just launched to big success in China, opening to $111 million and the accolade of second-best superhero launch (after Avengers: Infinity War), boosting its international haul to more than $673 million.
Ninth was Halloween, earning $3.8 million, with The Hate U Give staying in 10th via $2 million.
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