‘Ride Along 2’ beats ‘Star Wars’ at box office

Daily Variety reported the comedy sequel picked up a commanding $34 million over the four-day holiday weekend.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s “The Revenant, meanwhile, finished in the second spot on the heels of 12 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, grossing an impressive $29.5 million in its third week in theaters”. As for the champ of all – well, most – box office records, Star Wars: The Force Awakens finally began to show a real drop, but still managed to add $25.1 million in its fifth week of release, for an $851 million USA total. According to Deadline, it will end Martin Luther King Day with somewhere between $39.5 and $40.5 million.

Michael Bays’ “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” opened with $19.7 million in four days, performing strongest in the South.

“The Force Awakens” became the highest-grossing film in North American history earlier in the month when it grossed $764.4 million in the United States, putting it over the $760.5 million mark set by “Avatar” over the life of the film.

Globally, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” has grossed almost $1.9 billion. It screened at 2,389 locations.

That left “13 Hours” (Paramount Pictures) with a fourth-place debut of roughly $16 million, on par with the prerelease expectations of analysts but nothing close to the interest generated by some recent war-themed movies.

The only other new release this week, Norm of the North, came in at sixth with $6.7 million. The animated film about a polar bear who is displaced from his Arctic home and makes his way to New York City, should do US$8.8 million worth of business over the four-day span.

“The Revenant” wasn’t the only Oscar nominee to enjoy a bump. China, where Star Wars has earned more than $95 million to date, will be next. Germany. The local-language comedy, based on a best-selling travel book, has earned around $11 million in theatrical release so far.