Box Office: ‘Split’ Stays Strong, ‘Resident Evil’ is Dead?

After a very impressive debut of $40 million last weekend, M. Night Shyamalan’s Split holds the number one spot for a second week. The psychological horror dropped just 34% from its opening weekend takings, and so easily fended off some weak new releases. The film has now made over $100 million worldwide, on a miniscule budget of just $9 million; needless to say, this is fantastic news for both Shyamalan and star James McAvoy whose performance in the movie has been widely praised.

Click here for our review of Split.

Debuting in second place was A Dog’s Purpose, which pulled in over $18 million over the weekend despite PETA’s best efforts to encourage a boycott. Indeed, the film was at the center of controversy over the last week or so, as footage emerged of a dog being poorly treated during filming. Many Internet commenters expressed outrage, but the film seemingly came away relatively unharmed – this opening matched studio expectations.

Awards contender Hidden Figures came in at number three, continuing to show excellent stamina in its box office performance. The film dropped just 11% from last week, and hit a milestone by reaching a domestic total of over $100 million. The film was one of nine movies to be nominated for Best Picture at this year’s Academy Awards, and won Best Ensemble Cast at yesterday night’s SAG Awards.

At number four, the sixth film in the Resident Evil series suggested that maybe the franchise had chosen the right time to take a bow. The Final Chapter had the lowest opening of the series to date, bringing in a little under $14 million (that’s even less than the first film debuted with back in 2002). Resident Evil continues a trend we’ve seen develop over the last month, in which over-the-top action films have performed fairly poorly at the box office (see Underworld: Blood Wars and xXx: The Return of Xander Cage for more examples).

Still, this franchise has always performed better internationally than in North America, and its worldwide total currently stands at $78 million. If it is lucky enough to receive some gentle drops in the coming weeks, there could be something to salvage from this supposedly final installment (which had a relatively affordable budget of $40 million). Even if it does drop like a rock, the cumulative total of every Resident Evil movie has now surpassed one billion dollars, which is an impressive milestone (particularly for a videogame adaptation).

Awards front-runner La La Land rounds out the top five, expanding into more cinemas last weekend to capitalize on its fourteen Oscar nominations. Other contenders such as Moonlight and Arrival also expanded significantly, but failed to crack the top ten.

The most underwhelming performance of the week goes to Matthew McConaughey’s Gold. Intended to be an awards contender (but ultimately completely shut out), the film debuted with a whimper. It brought in just under $3.5 million over the weekend, settling for a spot at number ten.

Here’s the top ten in full: