Another marquee weekend for movie releases has come and gone with New Years’ weekend seeing a bevy of new releases hitting theatres but none of them were able to usurp the heavy hitters of the last two weekends in Jumanji: The Next Level and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
The new release that came closest to cracking the top two is the Guy Ritchie film The Gentlemen which opened its first weekend of release with over $3m, and was closely followed by the latest rendition of a classic in Little Woman, with the final new entry to the top five being the family-friendly film Spies in Disguise.
The films to drop out of the top five where Frozen 2 which made $1.73m this week bringing its six week total to $34.62m, JoJo Rabbit which made $1.04m bringing its total to $3.64m, and Cats which made $697,880 bringing its total to $3.15m.
Overall, the Australian box office made $26.20m which was a 15% decline on last weekend’s total despite having seven films over the $1m mark.
#1 Jumanji: The Next Level $7.75m
It’s only taken two weeks for the sequel to the 2017 reboot to amass $28.46m, the film also had the highest per-screen average this past weekend making $11,988 on 647 screens (also the highest).
#2 Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker $4.32m
With its total now at $39.19m after three weeks, the film is edging closer towards the $52.95m needed to overtake Jurrasic World to place inside the top 10 all-time Australian box office. The ninth entry in the saga averaged $8,379 per screen this weekend being shown on 516 screens.
#3 The Gentlemen $3.47m
The highest-earning new release this weekend is backed by a stellar ensemble cast of Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Henry Golding, Michelle Dockery, Jeremy Strong, Eddie Marsan, Colin Farrell, and Hugh Grant which powered the film to an average of $9,285 on 374 screens.
#4 Little Women $3.33m
The seventh film adaption of the novel first published in 1868 stars Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh and Eliza Scanlen as the titular little women, as the New Year’s Day release made a weekend average of $10,669 on 313 screens.
#5 Spies in Disguise $1.79m
The latest animated film by Disney features Will Smith and Tom Holland with a different twist of the spy genre in its first week of release, it averaged $5,570 on 323 screens.