Yahoo Autos Box office: ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ sets new opening weekend record for Keanu Reeves action franchise
The month of March has already shown great success at the box office with two franchise sequel records. Keanu Reeves‘ “John Wick: Chapter 4” joined them this weekend, as the highest opening for the actor’s popular action franchise, which has done better with each new installment.
The action movie co-starring Bill Skarsgård, Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne, the late Lance Reddick, Shamier Anderson, Donnie Yen, and Scott Adkins, came into the weekend with solid reviews, having had a high-profile premiere at the SXSW Film Festival earlier this month. The Lionsgate release opened with $29.4 million on Friday, including $8.9 million from Thursday previews, and ended up with an estimated $73.5 million in 3,855 theaters for the weekend, averaging over $19,000 per site, by far the best opening for the month.
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That’s compared to the $56.8 million opening for “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum” in May 2019 and $30.4 million for “John Wick: Chapter 2” two years earlier. “Wick: Chapter 4” also received an “A” CinemaScore from audiences, up from the last two movies, which both received “A-” scores.
Overseas, Reeves’ well-received action sequel made another $64 million, giving the movie a global opening of $137 million, a great start for what should be a solid run for the actor’s latest.
Warner Bros’ “Shazam!: Fury of the Gods,” starring Zachary Levi, took a massive 68% plunge in its second weekend to take second place with $9.7 million for a total of $46.3 million grossed domestically, so far. With the $12.1 million it added overseas, “Shazam!” is up to $102.4 million globally, which isn’t great when you consider that Marvel’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” made more than that in its opening weekend alone, just domestically.
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Third and fourth place were pretty close, but “Scream VI” was down 52% this weekend with $8.4 million to take third place, bringing its domestic total to $89.9 million, which should allow it to cross the $100 million milestone sometime before Easter.
“Creed III” made just slightly less than $8.4 million, down 46% from last weekend, to take fourth place with $140.9 million grossed so far. Those two movies are close enough that their order might change based on Monday actuals.
Adam Driver‘s sci-fi thriller “65” took fifth place with $3.3 million, down 45%, bringing its running total to $27.8 million.
“Ant-Man and the Wasp” dropped 43% from last weekend with an estimated $2.4 million, to take sixth place with $210 million grossed so far.
SEE‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ rave reviews: It stands above ‘the past decade’s worth of action films’
