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New York — Matthew McConaughey notched one of the worst debuts of his career, Oscar nominees saw only modest bumps and M. Night Shyamalan's Glass easily remained No. 1 on a quiet weekend in movie theatres.
The weekend's two new wide releases — McConaughey's tropic noir Serenity and the updated King Arthur tale The Kid Who Would Be King — both flopped with moviegoers who instead continued to flock to Glass and Kevin Hart's The Upside.
Shyamalan's sequel to Unbreakable and Split sold $19m in tickets according to estimates on Sunday, a decent 53 percent drop from its opening weekend. In 10 days of release, Shyamalan's self-financed thriller has made $73.6m domestically and $162.7m globally.
The Upside, starring Hart and Bryan Cranston, also stayed lodged in second place with $12.2m in its third weekend.
The weekend's biggest budget new entry, The Kid Who Would Be King, opened poorly with $7.3m against a $59m budget. The 20th Century Fox release, produced by Working Title, was written and directed by Attack the Block filmmaker Joe Cornish. In his modern-day London version of the legend, a working-class boy pulls Excalibur from a stone.
Though The Kid Who Would Be King drew good reviews (86 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and was largely pleasing to audiences (who gave it a B-plus CinemaScore), Cornish's film came in on the low side of already undersized expectations.
Smaller still was Serenity, from the recently launched distributor Aviron Pictures. Though boasting a respected writer-director (Steven Knight, the creator of Peaky Blinders and maker of 2013's Locke) and a starry cast including Anne Hathaway and Jason Clarke, Serenity made only a minor disturbance at the box office with $4.8m in ticket sales.
The film, about a fishing boat captain on a mysterious island, was lambasted by critics (21 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences agreed, giving it a D-plus CinemaScore. The film, made for about $25m, is among McConaughey's weakest performing wide-release debuts, behind only 2017's Gold and 1996's Larger Than Life. For Hathaway, it's a new low.
Several Oscar contenders added theatres over the weekend to capitalise on Tuesday's nominations. Peter Farrelly's Green Book, nominated for five awards including best picture, received the biggest bump, taking in $5.4m in its widest releases yet (2 430 theatres in its 11th week of release), along with $5.7m overseas.
Green Book was the only Oscar film to crack the top 10. Bohemian Rhapsody, which has already surpassed $600m internationally, added another $8.7m overseas. It also took in $2.5m domestically.
The Favourite, which tied Roma with a co-leading 10 Oscar nominations, added 517 theatres to gross $2.6m in 1 540 locations. The critical Dick Cheney biopic Vice also expanded, drawing $1.8m from 1 557 theatres.
