As the sun and moon charted a coinciding path across the solar system, Monkey Man had its own moment when the Dev Patel directed film eclipsed Disney’s The First Omen at the box office. Patel’s feature directorial debut had a wide release over the April 6th weekend, but was only rolled out to 3,029 theaters — 346 theaters less than its competitor.
The Jordan Peele produced pic averaged $3,334 per theater and reportedly earned a total domestic box office of $10.1M over its opening weekend. Another $2.6M came from its modest international rollout for a worldwide cume of $12.7M.
Still, the film ranked No. 122 on the list of films with the worst wide release openings in 3,000 theaters or more, sharing company with films such as Babylon ($3.6M at 3,343 theaters), The King’s Man ($5.9M at 3,180 theaters), and The Expendables 4 ($8M at 3,518 theaters). The First Omen lands at No. 85 on that list, dragging in only $8.4M at a whopping 3,375 locations.
Monkey Man was received with enthusiastic reviews from both moviegoers and film critics. Critics rated the action flick higher at 88% on RT, while the audience approved with 83%. The First Omen was not so lucky with audiences giving it a 67% rating, a hard contrast from the 80% grade from critics.
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Although Monkey Man comes in first as the weekend’s No. 1 box office performer, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire still holds rank overall at $31.2M over Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Thanks to an increase in screening locations, in its second week of release, the Warner Bros. film experienced a 104.7% uptick ($8.5M) on Friday, followed by a 62.5% increase ($13.7M) on Saturday, before dropping 34.5% to a daily of $9M on Sunday.
As it stands, Godzilla x Kong has amassed $134.5M domestically and $226.6M overseas. Again, a far cry from tentpoles like Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, which amassed a little over $15M during its second weekend, and is already trailing off in its third weekend with just $88.9M domestically.
Godzilla x Kong’s continued success is a big win for Warner Bros., fresh off the box office success of Dune: Part Two, now in its sixth week. Not only did Dune collect $7M-plus over the weekend, but the sci-fi film nears the billion-dollar mark with a domestic cume of $265M and international cume of $400.4M.
