‘The Grinch’ Tops Box Office With $66 Million Take, ‘The Girl In The Spider’s Web’ Flops
With the release of The Grinch into theaters last Friday, the holiday season is officially underway. Critics weren’t crazy about the new incarnation of the beloved Dr. Seuss character, the film currently holds a 55 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, but audiences scored the film higher with a 71 percent.
According to a report from USA Today, The Grinch will take the number one spot at the domestic box office this weekend with an impressive $66 million grab. Actor Benedict Cumberbatch stepped into the titular role, replacing actor Jim Carey from Ron Howard’s previous 2000 film, How The Grinch Stole Christmas. The film is narrated by musician Pharrell Williams.
Taking the runner-up spot over the weekend is the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, which scored another $30 million take, bringing its overall box office performance to approximately $100 million. After garnering mixed reviews from movie critics the film was a massive hit with fans and outdid studio expectations.
'THE GRINCH' Opens to $66 Million at the Box Office https://t.co/BFyEFqEhZT pic.twitter.com/h0qon20xPO
— ComicBook NOW! (@ComicBookNOW) November 11, 2018
In the third and fourth-place positions was Overlord and Disney’s The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, which took in $10.1 million and $9.6 million, respectively.
On the other end of the spectrum, the big financial disappointment over the weekend was Fede Alvarez’s dark thriller The Girl in the Spider’s Web. The movie only took $8 million on a reported $45 million budget, with a weekend box office rank at number five. Possible contributors to its lackluster opening were the critical reviews for the movie, which generally ranged from mediocre to bad.
David Sims of the Atlantic panned the movie and considered it an unworthy follow up to David Fincher’s award-winning hit The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Spider’s Web is set in a similar snow-globe version of Sweden as last year’s incompetent crime drama The Snowman, a country where everyone speaks accented English and the threat of murder constantly hangs in the air. There’s no chance for any energy or fun, which is a problem for a movie that’s trying to present itself as a secret-agent thriller. Rest assured, in The Girl in the Spider’s Web, Lisbeth Salander saves the day, and she looks cool doing it. But this is a story so slick that she’d be rolling her eyes if she watched it.
Vying for the top spot next week in hopes of de-throning The Grinch will be the Harry Potter spin-off, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald. November 21 will also see more animated family film competition for The Grinch, as Ralph Breaks The Internet will be arriving in theaters to compete.
With The Grinch’s potentially sustainable Christmas theme, it’s on track to continue its overperformance through the end of December.
