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New York — On a typically sleepy post-Thanksgiving weekend in movie theatres, leftovers led the box office as Disney's Ralph Breaks the Internet repeated as No. 1 with $25.8m in ticket sales, according to studio estimates on Sunday.
The Wreck-It Ralph sequel dropped steeply (54 percent) after nearly setting a Thanksgiving record last weekend. But with only one new film in wide release, nothing came close to Ralph Breaks the Internet, which sends John C. Reilly and Sarah Silverman's video-game characters into cyberspace. In 11 days of release, the $175m film has cleared $207m worldwide.
Still going strong in its fourth week of release, Universal's The Grinch came in second with $17.7m in ticket sales. The Grinch, the Illumination animated production with Benedict Cumberbatch as the Christmas curmudgeon, surpassed $200m domestically and edged in front of last week's No. 2 film, the Rocky sequel Creed II.
Like Ralph Breaks the Internet, MGM's boxing drama also slid sizably after a big holiday opening, declining 53 percent. Creed II, with Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Creed, took in $16.8m in its second weekend. It has thus far grossed $81.2m on a $50m budget.
The week's lone new wide release, the Sony Screen Gems horror film The Possession of Hannah Grace, opened modestly with $6.5m. Orion Picture's Anna and the Apocalypse, a well-reviewed indie mash-up — your standard zombie-comedy-musical — debuted in five theatres, with about $50k in ticket sales.
Crazy Rich Asians, Warner Bros.' breakout summer hit, was a dud in China. Warner Bros. said the acclaimed romantic comedy, which earned $173m, domestically, debuted in China with just $1.2m. John M. Chu's Singapore-set film, which opened 14 August in the U.S., took months to secure a release date in China, a delay some have attributed to the film's depiction of extremely wealthy Chinese Singaporeans.
Crazy Rich Asians was a hit at the Singapore box office, but, like most comedies, it hasn't been as much a sensation abroad as it was in the U.S. - it's earned $64m overseas. The film's performance in China, though, is potentially worrisome for Warner Bros. Its planned sequel, China Rich Girlfriend, aims to better capitalise on the world's second largest film market.
One film that didn't dip much on the weekend was Universal's Green Book, which grossed $3.9m on 1 065 screens, dropping 29 percent. The uplifting 1962 road trip drama, starring Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen, has struggled to match Oscar buzz with box office. But last week, Green Book was named best film of the year by the National Board of Review, and Universal is hoping it holds strongly in the coming weeks.
Free Solo became the year's fourth documentary to cross $10m. Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin's documentary about Alex Honnold's ropeless ascent of Yosemite National Park's El Capitan rock face, has joined the most lucrative batch of documentaries ever released in a year: Three Identical Strangers, RBG and Won't You Be My Neighbour?
