Weekend Box Office: Mean Girls remains on top while I.S.S crashes

Last Updated on January 24, 2024

January is generally a quiet time at the box office as studios give their big Holiday hits some breathing room while also avoiding the massive draw that is the NFL playoffs. Last year at this time, the record breaking Avatar: The Way of Water was still riding high with a $20.1 million take in its sixth week while Puss in Boots: The Last Wish continued its epic run from a $12 million opening to a $186 million domestic finish. We even had a surprise horror hit with M3GAN entering her third week with just under $10 million while the Tom Hanks starring A Man Called Otto continued to see solid numbers for a drama aimed at adults. 

This year sees this third weekend of January hit a bit of a snag with the remake/ Broadway adaptation Mean Girls landing in first place for a second week in a row with $11.7 million. That number represents a 59% drop off, proving that its 65% audience score and B cinemascore are keeping some audiences away. Of course this second week drop off isn’t horrible news for the film because the budget was just $36 million and with $50 million already in domestic grosses, Mean Girls will see a solid profit for the studio. Even though I wasn’t the biggest fan of this movie (it recycled too much from the original), I would love to see a sequel that combined the casts from the two movies to create some sort of meta mash-up comedy masterpiece.

Remaining in second place is the Jason Statham/ David Ayer/ Phylicia Rashad (names I’m sure we all thought would one day share a marquee)  film The Beekeeper, with an additional $8.4 million added to its domestic total of $31.1 million. With just a $40 million budget (relatively cheap for an action film in today’s $300 million marketplace), this tale of revenge should see a decent return on investment once international numbers are figured in. You can check out Tyler Nichols’ 7/10 review here.

Third place goes to the holiday heavyweight that is Wonka with an additional $6.4 million added to its stellar $187.1 million domestic total. With over half a billion dollars collected worldwide, this musical prequel has emerged as a genuine hit for the studio. By the end of Monday, Wonka will likely become star Timothée Chalamet’s highest-grossing domestic release ever, as it passes Interstellar’s $188 million (Wonka has a bit of a climb to go if it wants to pass that films $731 million worldwide total.) (For those who may not remember, Chalamet played a young Casey Affleck in the Christopher Nolan film.)

Coming in fourth is Anyone But You which is continuing to draw on its tremendous word of mouth for another $5.4 million added to its solid $64.2 million domestic total. With a budget of just $25 million and a worldwide total nearing the $100 million mark, this movie has been the true surprise of the past month. Personally, I am glad this movie is finding success as I found it to be a solid old school R-rated comedy that knew what it wanted to do and did it.

Rounding out the top five and making our predictions from Thursday spot on is Migration, with another $5.3 million added to its domestic total of $94.6 million. This one is following the model set forth by last year’s Puss in Boots as families continue to flock to it, giving it tremendous legs at the box office. The good news is that it still has a solid runway as the next animated family film to release is Kung Fu Panda 4, which doesn’t drop until March 8.

Sixth place belongs to Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom with $3.6 million, while the Ariana DeBose-fronted I.S.S sees a dismal seventh place opening with just $3 million. This is no laughing matter for the studio, which spent around $14 million on the film before marketing costs and will likely fail to recoup even that as the film has a horrible C- CinemaScore while not enough people saw it to give it an audience score yet! I did actually catch this one last week and thought it was okay. The first half was a decent claustrophobic thriller with an intriguing premise, while the second half just ran out of steam, resorting to space thriller cliches. 

Rounding out the top ten is Night Swim with $2.7 million, followed by the George Clooney-directed true story The Boys in the Boat with $2.5 million. Seeing a bit of an awards season bump is the Emma Stone starring Poor Things which actually gained 14% this weekend with around $2 million in receipts. Hopefully, the more people that see the movie will help propel Stone onto that stage come Oscar Sunday, as I think her performance is one of the best we have seen in a while and blows the competition out of the water.

Did you make it to theaters this weekend? If so, let us know what you saw, and don’t forget to take our weekly poll where this week we take a trip to the past and ask: What is your Favorite Movie from 1994?