Box office hits and misses: ‘Lego Batman’ tops ‘Fifty Shades’ and ‘John Wick’ in big weekend

As expected, The Lego Batman Movie led the way with a $55.6 million opening weekend in U.S. theaters — the biggest premiere of the year so far. On its way to the top, the follow-up to 2014’s surprise hit The Lego Movie weathered a major meteorological obstacle in the form of a winter storm that hobbled much of the East Coast and brought down the overall box-office numbers for the weekend.

Slightly outperforming expectations was the weekend’s second-biggest film, Fifty Shades Darker, the erotic thriller that continues the sadomasochistic saga that began with 2011’s Fifty Shades of Grey. Like its predecessor, the film did well despite poor reviews, and is likely to carry that success into the Valentine’s Day holiday for a decent second-week bump.

It’s worth noting that although the top two films both enjoyed positive debuts, neither The Lego Movie nor Fifty Shades Darker managed to beat their predecessors’ opening weekends ($69 million for The Lego Movie and $85.1 million for Fifty Shades of Grey), so it will be interesting to see how well they do over the long run.

In third place for the weekend was John Wick: Chapter Two, which outperformed expectations in a big way with a $30 million premiere — more than double the first film’s $14.4 million debut in U.S. theaters. Keanu Reeves’ action sequel earned overwhelmingly positive reviews on par with The Lego Batman Movie, and is off to a great start in theaters.

With the Academy Awards ceremony right around the corner, three of this year’s “Best Picture” nominees continued their strong runs among the week’s top ten films. Currently, Hidden Figures leads all nominees with $131.4 million domestically so far, but La La Land is close behind it with $126 million in U.S. theaters. This is the sixth consecutive week that Hidden Figures has finished among the weekend’s top five films.

This upcoming week brings a wide range of new releases that could challenge for the top spot at the box office. Among them is Matt Damon’s action-fantasy epic The Great Wall, as well as Gore Verbinski’s thriller A Cure For Wellness and the raunchy comedy Fist Fight.