Creed III punches its way to top of North America box office

MGM’s boxing drama Creed III scored an opening-round knockout this weekend, taking in an estimated US$58.7 million to top North America’s box office in one of the biggest debuts ever for a sports film.

That made first-time director Michael B Jordan – who again plays rock-hard boxer Apollo Creed – the “undefeated box office champion,” said industry analyst Exhibitor Relations.

“This opening is sensational,” said analyst David A Gross of Franchise Entertainment Research. “Weekends like this are good news for the industry.”

In this ninth film in the Rocky franchise – the first without Sylvester Stallone in the Rocky Balboa role he created – Creed comes out of retirement for a dramatic showdown against an old friend played by Jonathan Majors.

That makes this a pretty good weekend for Majors, the villain in Marvel and Disney’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which placed second for the Friday-through-Sunday (Mar 5) period at US$12.5 million. Paul Rudd stars as the title ant; Evangeline Lilly is the Wasp.

In third place was Universal’s Cocaine Bear at US$11 million. The horror comedy is based loosely on the true story of a black bear that wreaks havoc in the Tennessee woods after consuming a cache of lost cocaine. Keri Russell plays one of the locals caught up in the crazy.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – To the Swordsmith Village, an anime sequel from Crunchyroll, placed fourth at US$10.1 million. The previous Demon Slayer film last year had a record debut for a non-English language feature, taking in US$19.5 million, Variety reported.

And in fifth was Lionsgate’s Christian drama Jesus Revolution, a story of a 1960s religious movement in California. It took in US$8.7 million.

Rounding out the top 10 were:

Avatar: The Way of Water (US$3.6 million)

Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (US$3.2 million)

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (US$2.7 million)

Magic Mike’s Last Dance (US$1.2 million)

80 for Brady (US$845,000)

AFP