‘Ride Along 2’ ends box office reign of ‘Force Awakens’

Star Wars: The Force Awakens has many more mountains to climb before it leaves theaters for good, but its weekend fall from the No. 1 box office spot means the “15 consecutive weeks at No. 1” record held by Cameron’s Titanic since 1998 won’t be conquered yet.

Oscar tipped film The Revenant has knocked Star Wars: The Force Awakens off the top of the United Kingdom box office chart. Globally, “The Force Awakens” sits at $1.86 billion, third all-time behind “Titanic” and “Avatar“. That’s despite Chinese audiences being largely unfamiliar with the franchise, which never saw heavy release there.

Michael Bays’ “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” opened with $19.7 million in four days and $16 million in three days.

In second place for the seven days ending Sunday was the Chinese animated film “Boonie Bears 3”, which officially opened Saturday and has earned $20 million to date. This brought its running total to $87 million.

This achieved not only the highest grossing opening day, but also the highest grossing opening week ever at the cinema, eclipsing the previous results for the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in 2012.

Norm of the North made $6.6 million for a 6 place finish. That’s below the $10 million that most analysts predicted that the critically-reviled film (a awful 0% on RT) would likely fetch. That was enough to push it past $50 million. After an excellent opening, Tarantino’s eighth film fell more than 60 percent in its second week to $1.5 million. (The four-day estimate is not available yet.) The film has now brought its totals to $21.1 million domestically and $22.4 million worldwide; it’s still on par for around $30 million domestically by the end of its run.

The comedy sequel picked up a leading US$34 million (RM149.447 million) across 3,175 venues and US$39.5 million over the four-day Martin Luther King weekend. Its $5.2 million was only a 16% drop from last weekend. The Hateful Eight followed right behind with $3.4 million.

This weekend sees the release of the thriller “The Boy” and the raunchy comedy “Dirty Grandpa” starring Zac Efron and Robert De Niro.