Box Office: ‘Split’ Threepeats, Reviews Kill ‘Rings’

Over the weekend, M. Night Shyamalan’s Split held the number one spot at the North American box office for the third consecutive week, fending off two wide releases with a haul of around $14.5 million. Not since 1999’s The Sixth Sense has a Shyamalan film held the top position for three weeks in a row, and Split is also soon to be the writer-director’s fifth feature to cross $100 million domestically.

RELATED: Our review of ‘Split’

The strongest new release was Rings, the second sequel to Gore Verbinski’s The Ring, which comes twelve years after the previous instalment. Critics were agreed that the scariest thing about the movie was how bad it was, with some truly scathing reviews likely having a hand in this underwhelming debut. The film made about $13 million over the weekend, enough to take the number two position, but the lowest opening for the franchise to date.

Indeed, while both previous Ring movies reached a domestic total of over $100 million, this entry seems unlikely to reach higher than $30 million. With a relatively low production budget of $25 million, the movie is likely to breakeven with a little help from overseas. Still, this is a disappointing result for the film and will likely lead to the franchise taking an extended leave of absence once again.

Still, Rings wasn’t the only movie to suffer over the weekend; another critically-panned new release, The Space Between Us, was shut-out by audiences and fell well below its underwhelming expectations. The film was predicted to make somewhere between $8-10 million last weekend, but instead struggled to just shy of $4 million settling for the number nine spot. The film is yet to open internationally so the full extent of the damage remains to be seen, but turning a profit from its $30 million production budget is looking to be a difficult undertaking.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter entered its second week of release, and found itself dropping like a rock. The film plummeted nearly 67% from its opening weekend takings, bringing in a meagre $4.5 million. The franchise has always struggled for attention in North America, doing much of its business overseas, but never has it lost its footing this dramatically. The Final Chapter is likely to be the lowest-grossing entry in the series domestically, but worldwide has now brought in $117 million, overtaking the first film’s total gross ($103 million) and looking to overtake the second film ($129 million) quite soon.

Also in its second week of release is A Dog’s Purpose, which after a whirlwind of controversy prior to release is actually performing relatively well. The film dropped a comparatively gentle 40% from its debut, managing to hold a position at number three. A report by the American Humane organisation which appears to debunk the footage which threatened to torpedo the film, may bring out more people next week who were previously on the fence about giving the feature their money.

Oscar contenders Hidden Figures and La La Land round out the top five, while fellow Best Picture nominee Lion adds another 830 theatres to surge up to number eight with a $4 million haul.

Here’s the top ten in full: