Skip to main content

‘Coco’ reigns at weekend box office, but ‘Disaster Artist’ and ‘I, Tonya’ thrive

weekend box office coco justice league the disaster artist
There was a sense of déjà vu at the weekend box office, with the top three movies remaining the same from last week as Hollywood settles into a holding pattern awaiting the arrival of Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi.

Disney and Pixar’s animated feature Coco was the weekend’s top movie for the third straight week, topping Warner Bros. Pictures’ underperforming superhero team-up film Justice League once again. Coco follows in the footsteps of last year’s animated feature Moana — another Disney movie — which won the weekend box office every week following its Thanksgiving debut, right up until the premiere of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

The entire top ten wasn’t a holdover from last week, though, as a few new films appeared among the weekend’s highest-grossing movies.

# Title  Weekend    U.S. Total   Worldwide Total 
1. Coco $18.3M $135.5M $389.5M
2. Justice League  $9.5M $212M $613.3M
3. Wonder $8.4M $100.3M $129.6M
4. The Disaster Artist  $6.4M $8M $9.7M
5. Thor: Ragnarok $6.2M $301.1M $833.1M
6. Daddy’s Home 2 $6M $91.1M $142.3M
7. Murder on the Orient Express  $5.1M $92.7M $274.7M
8. The Star $3.6M $32.2M $36.8M
9. Lady Bird $3.5M $22.3M $22.3M
10. Just Getting Started $3.1M $3.1M $3.1M

Coming in fourth over the weekend was James Franco’s The Disaster Artist — a comedy chronicling the creation of one of Hollywood’s most infamously terrible moviesThe Room. After an impressive premiere in just 19 theaters last week that raked in more than $63,000 per theater, the film expanded to 840 theaters this week and cracked the weekend’s top five films with $6.4 million, giving it a still-impressive $7,661 per theater in its second week.

Given the warm welcome The Disaster Artist has received from critics and audiences, the film is poised for a strong run in theaters now that it’s going wide.

The only new release to make it into the weekend’s top ten films was the comedy Just Getting Started, which only managed a meager $3.1 million from its debut in more than 2,100 theaters. Combined with its “C” grade on audience polling site CinemaScore and a painfully bad 9-percent positive review rating on RottenTomatoes, the film is likely to disappear from theaters before anyone even knows it’s there.

Although it didn’t make it into the weekend’s top ten films, Margot Robbie’s biopic of disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding, I, Tonya, premiered in just four theaters but earned $245,602 from its limited release. The film’s per-theater average of $61,401 and the Oscar buzz it’s already receiving certainly bodes well for its wider theatrical run in the weeks to come.

The upcoming weekend’s biggest movie is a foregone, with The Last Jedi hitting theaters with a high likelihood of setting a host of box-office records. The latest installment of what is arguably the biggest movie franchise of all time, The Last Jedi is the direct sequel to 2015’s Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, the highest-grossing movie of all time in U.S. theaters and the third highest-grossing movie of all time worldwide.

The only other noteworthy film arriving in theaters is the animated feature Ferdinand, which could carve out a nice debut as the next major, family-friendly animated film to kick off its theatrical run after Coco.

Editors' Recommendations

Rick Marshall
A veteran journalist with more than two decades of experience covering local and national news, arts and entertainment, and…
‘Thor: Ragnarok’ smashes records with huge weekend box office
thor: ragnarok

Chalk up another big win for Marvel Studios, which kept its streak alive with the 17th straight film in its live-action cinematic universe to debut in the top spot at the weekend box office.

Thor: Ragnarok lived up to the early buzz it received with an impressive $121 million opening weekend in U.S. theaters, as well as some big numbers overseas, too. The third entry in the Thor solo series had the seventh-biggest premiere for any Marvel movie so far, topping the $117 million debut of Spider-Man: Homecoming earlier this year and coming in just under the $128.1 million opening weekend for Iron Man 2 in 2010.

Read more
‘Jigsaw’ wins pitiful Halloween weekend box office as ‘Suburbicon’ flops
box office jigsaw halloween weekend

It was a scary weekend for Hollywood -- and not just because Halloween is around the corner.

Four horror movies factored into the top ten films at the box office, with Saw franchise sequel Jigsaw leading the pack with a $16.2 million debut. The eighth film in the gory torture series is off to a decent start for a film that only cost $10 million to make, but it had the second-worst opening weekend of the franchise so far and poor reviews from both general audiences and professional critics.

Read more
'Geostorm' fizzles as 'Boo 2' scares up a win at the box office
weekend box office boo 2 madea halloween geostorm amh d3 02693 raf

As predicted, Tyler Perry's holiday-themed sequel Boo 2! A Madea Halloween terrified the competition over the weekend, and ended up the big winner at the box office with a $21.6 million debut.

The premiere of Boo 2 marked the seventh time one of Perry's "Madea" films broke the $20 million mark, with all but 2013's A Madea Christmas crossing that box-office threshold -- not too shabby, considering that the films have all been made on budgets in the $5-20 million range.

Read more