‘Crazy Rich Asians’ spurs strong North American box office
The combination of new films and the strength of Crazy Rich Asians was expected to bolster sales for the final weekend of the summer movie season
The Warner Bros. romantic comedy collected US$22.2 million in the US and Canada, comScore Inc. estimated in an email Sunday.
Warner Bros.’s The Meg ranked second, taking in US$10.5 million. Paramount’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout placed third with US$7 million, and Operation Finale, about the hunt for notorious Nazi Adolf Eichmann, came in fourth place for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer with US$6 million.
Kin, a new science-fiction film from Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., failed to land in the top 10.
The combination of new films and the strength of Crazy Rich Asians was expected to bolster sales for the final weekend of the summer movie season. Through the extended weekend, the top 10 films were expected to bring in almost US$100 million, Box Office Pro estimated. That would be about 60 per cent more than a year earlier, when the biggest films collected US$61.7 million.
Crazy Rich Asians was forecast to collect more than US$23 million from Friday to Sunday, according to the estimate of Box Office Mojo. An adaptation of a bestselling novel about Singapore’s rich and elite, the movie is in its third week atop the North American box office and is being celebrated for opening the door to more diversity in Hollywood.
The film features John Cho as a father who uses social media to find his daughter. It was forecast by Box Office Mojo to take in US$5 million over the three days. RottenTomatoes.com said 90 per cent of critics recommended the film.
Operation Finale, which opened earlier in the week, missed Box Office Mojo’s forecast of US$7.2 million. The film stars Ben Kingsley as Eichmann, the mastermind of the Holocaust, and follows the Israeli effort to capture him and put him on trial. More than half of critics recommended the movie, which cost about US$24 million to make.
