WASHINGTON (AP) – The Keke Palmer buddy comedy One of Them Days opened in first place on the North American box office charts on a particularly slow Martin Luther King Jr holiday weekend.
The Sony release earned USD11.6 million from 2,675 theatres, according to studio estimates on Sunday, beating Disney’s Mufasa: The Lion King by a hair. By the end of Monday’s holiday, Mufasa had the edge, however.
One of Them Days cost only USD14 million to produce.
The very well-reviewed buddy comedy stars Palmer and SZA as friends and roommates scrambling to get money for rent before their landlord evicts them.
Notably it’s the first Black female-led theatrical comedy since Girls Trip came out in 2017 and it currently carries a stellar 96 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
But the marketplace was also quite weak overall.
The total box office for Friday, Saturday and Sunday will add up to less than USD80 million, according to data from Comscore, making it one of the worst Martin Luther King Jr holiday weekends since 1997.
“For an individual film like One of Them Days this was a great weekend,” said senior media analyst for Comscore Paul Dergarabedian.
“You can still find success stories within what is overall a low grossing weekend for movie theatres.”
The Walt Disney Co’s Mufasa was close by in second place with USD11.5 million from the weekend, its fifth playing in theatres.
Globally, the Barry Jenkins-directed prequel has made USD588 million. It even beat a brand-new offering, the Blumhouse horror Wolf Man, which debuted in third place with USD10.6 million from 3,354 North American theatres.
Writer-director Leigh Whannell’s monster tale starring Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner did not enter theatres with great reviews. It currently carries a 53 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Reviews don’t generally affect the success of horror movies in their first weekend, but audiences also gave it a lackluster C- CinemaScore in exit polls.
The Blumhouse production and Universal Pictures release cost a reported USD25 million to make and reached USD12 million by the close of Monday’s holiday.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was in fourth place with USD8.6 million and Den of Thieves 2 rounded out the top five with USD6.6 million.
In specialty releases, Brady Corbert’s 215-minute post-war epic The Brutalist expanded to 388 screens where it made nearly USD2 million over the weekend.
A24 reported that it sold out various 70mm and IMAX showings. The studio also re-released its Colman Domingo drama Sing Sing in theatres and prisons, where over one million incarcerated people in 46 states were able to view the film.
The Martin Luther King Jr holiday weekend has seen major successes in the past.
Dergarabedian noted Bad Boys for Life, which had a three-day opening of USD62.5 million in 2020, and American Sniper, which earned USD89.3 in its first weekend in wide release in 2016.
“This is a year that’s going to get a big boost starting with Captain America: Brave New World and Paddington in Peru in February,” Dergarabedian said. – Lindsey Bahr
