Box Office: ‘Jumanji’ to Beat ’12 Strong,’ ‘Den of Thieves’ for Top Slot
Sony’s “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” is set to top the weekend box office for the third consecutive week over newcomers “12 Strong” and “Den of Thieves,” with $20 million from 3,704 North American locations.
Warner Bros.’ “12 Strong” should take second place in its opening weekend, with more than $15 million from 3,002 domestic sites. STXfilms’ “Den of Thieves” will slot into a tight third with slightly over $15 million from 2,432 theaters. The second weekend of Fox’s wide release of “The Post” should win fourth with $12 million, and “The Greatest Showman,” from the same studio, should take fifth with $11 million in its fifth weekend.
“Jumanji” has proven a surprise hit for Sony, with this weekend marking the third in a row that the film has topped the box office despite strong challenges from Fox’s “The Post” and several other openers. The film crossed $300 million domestically on Friday, which should rise to $317 million by the end of the weekend, making it Sony’s fifth highest-grossing film of all time. “Jumanji” has also been popular internationally, surpassing $385 million in foreign markets.
“12 Strong” is set to land about where forecasts had predicted; the film had been tracking in the $14 to $17 million range. It stars Chris Hemsworth and Michael Shannon and is based on Doug Stanton’s 2009 bestselling book “Horse Soldiers,” which centers on CIA paramilitary operations officers and U.S. Special Forces sent to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks. Alcon Entertainment, Black Label Media, and Jerry Bruckheimer are producers, with Nicolai Fuglsig directing.
The R-rated “Den of Thieves,” starring Gerard Butler, O’Shea Jackson Jr., and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, follows the intersecting lives of an elite unit of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and a successful bank robbery crew as the outlaws plan a seemingly impossible heist on the Federal Reserve Bank in downtown Los Angeles. Christian Gudegast is directing from his original screenplay, based on a story by Gudegast and Paul Scheuring. The film has come in ahead of tracking estimates.
“The Post” centers on the 1971 legal battle by the Washington Post and New York Times over the publication of the Pentagon Papers and stars Meryl Streep as WaPo publisher Katharine Graham and Tom Hanks as editor Ben Bradlee. It should finish the weekend with more than $45 million domestically.
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