(Los Angeles) The boxing film Creed III stunned the competition in North American theaters this weekend, grossing $58.7 million for one of the best debut sports movies in boxing history.
Posted at 3:04pm
First-time director Michael B. Jordan — who also plays the title role in Apollo Creed — is the “undisputed box office champion,” according to industry firm Exhibitor Relations.
For David A. Gross of Franchise Entertainment Research, the film begins “sensationally”. “Weekends like this are good news for the industry,” said the expert.
In this ninth film in the Rocky saga, the first without Sylvester Stallone, Apollo Creed comes out of retirement for a much-anticipated showdown against an old friend, played by Jonathan Majors.
The latter also plays the super villain in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania alongside Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly. The Marvel film slipped to second place on the box office after two weeks at the top, grossing $12.5 million between Friday and Sunday.
In third place, with $11 million in sales, is Universal Studios’ new black comedy, Crazy Bear, which is slated for a March 15 release in France.
The film is inspired by an event in 1985 when smugglers dropped packets of cocaine from a plane in a forest in the southern United States and later consumed it by an 80 kg black bear. In the fiction, the bear doesn’t die of an overdose, but embarks on a murderous epic.
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, the sequel to the 2020 Japanese anime film, took fourth place at the box office with $10.1 million. The first Demon Slayer, based on the manga of the same name, had a record debut at the North American box office with $19.5 million for a film in a language other than English, according to Variety magazine.
In fifth place, with 8.7 million in gross this weekend, is the Christian film Jesus Revolution, a true story of a long-haired, bearded man from the California hippies of the early 1970s that is shaking a more traditional church and has hundreds of people around gathered youngsters bathed in a counterculture with mystical accents.
The rest of the top 10
6. Avatar: The Way of Water ($3.6 million)
7. Operation Fortune: Stratagem (3.2 million)
8. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2.7 million)
9. Magic Mike’s Last Dance (1.2 million)
10.80 for Brady (0.8 million)