'Dungeons & Dragons' tops 'Wick' to lead box office with $38.5M
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (NASDAQ:PARA) (NASDAQ:PARAA) mapped its way to the top of the box-office list with an opening slightly better than expected, and enough to get past a big decline from John Wick: Chapter 4 (NYSE:LGF.A) (LGF.B).
The D&D film opened to $38.5M, according to Comscore, while John Wick 4 saw a hefty 62% drop-off from its stellar $73.5M opening to end up at $28.2M for its sophomore outing.
Dungeons & Dragons (PARA)(PARAA) added another $33M in international markets to land at a global cumulative total of $71.5M. John Wick 4, meanwhile, added another $35M internationally to bring its global total to $244.9M.
The D&D win was also a partial victory for Entertainment One (NASDAQ:HAS), owner of D&D's intellectual property, which covered a solid chunk of the film's production budget.
The two films dominated moviegoers' attention; following far behind them in Comscore's totals were Scream VI (PARA) (PARAA), with $5.3M; His Only Son (Angel Studios), with $5.3M; Creed III (AMZN), with $5M; Shazam! Fury of the Gods (WBD), with $4.7M; and A Thousand and One (CMCSA), with $1.8M.
Industrywide, the box office total of about $97.5M was up 22% vs. the same weekend last year.
Meanwhile, D&D led blockbuster-focused IMAX (IMAX) to a global weekend of $8.7M, Comscore noted, with D&D accounting for $5.7M of that (and with The Super Mario Bros. Movie (CMCSA) set to head to 1,400 IMAX screens starting Wednesday).
Cinema tickers: AMC Entertainment (AMC); Cineworld (OTCPK:CNNWQ); Cinemark (CNK); (IMAX); Marcus (MCS); Reading International (RDI); Cineplex (CGX:CA); National CineMedia (NCMI).