Dwayne Johnson powers Rampage past A Quiet Place at the box office
After a slow start Friday, Dwayne Johnson and a giant gorilla are poised to top the box office this weekend.
The action hero’s new disaster movie Rampage will debut with an estimated $34.5 million from 4,101 theaters in the U.S. and Canada through Sunday, edging out last week’s No. 1 title, A Quiet Place, while the horror flick Truth or Dare opens in third.
Despite taking the crown, Rampage is coming in on the low end of industry projections, which had it pegged in the $35 million-$40 million range. The New Line and Warner Bros. film, which reportedly cost about $120 million to make, is off to a solid start overseas, where it will gross an estimated $114.1 million this weekend.
Based on the classic arcade game about giant monsters laying waste to cities, Rampage stars Johnson as a primatologist and former soldier who gets caught up in a rogue experiment that mutates an albino gorilla he saved from poachers — as well as a wolf and a crocodile. The movie failed to impress critics but garnered an A-minus CinemaScore, suggesting decent word-of-mouth prospects.
Rampage will need to demonstrate staying power, like Johnson’s recent hit Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, and/or do big business internationally to be considered a success.
In second place, Paramount’s thriller A Quiet Place will take in about $32.6 million, which represents a very modest 35% decline from its excellent opening last week. That figure brings the movie’s domestic total to about $100 million after 10 days in theaters. The film has added about $51.7 million from foreign markets.
Directed by John Krasinski, who also stars alongside wife Emily Blunt, A Quiet Place follows a family living in silence in order to hide from creatures that hunt their prey by sound.
Also scaring up ticket sales this weekend is Universal and Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare, which will gross about $19.1 million from 3,029 North American figures. That’s an impressive number for a movie that reportedly cost about $3.5 million to make and was shredded by critics. Audiences gave it a B-minus CinemaScore.
Rounding out the top five are Steven Spielberg and Warner Bros’. sci-fi adventure Ready Player One, with about $11.2 million in its third weekend, and Universal’s R-rated comedy Blockers, with about $10.3 million in its second weekend.
Fox Searchlight also expanded Wes Anderson’s stop-motion movie Isle of Dogs to 1,939 theaters (up from 554), collecting an estimated $5 million (good for seventh place) and upping its domestic total to about $18.5 million.
According to ComScore, overall box office is down 2.3 percent year-to-date. Check out the April 13-15 figures below.
1. Rampage — $34.5 million
2. A Quiet Place — $32.6 million
3. Truth or Dare — $19.1 million
4. Ready Player One — $11.2 million
5. Blockers — $10.3 million
6. Black Panther — $5.3 million
7. Isle of Dogs — $5 million
8. I Can Only Imagine — $3.8 million
9. Acrimony — $3.7 million
10. Chappaquiddick — $3 million