Death beats marriage over quiet weekend at US box office

Los Angeles

THERE was a battle between love and "Death" over the weekend at the North American box office, as the Jennifer Lopez rom-com Marry Me and Kenneth Branagh's follow-up to his 2017 whodunit Murder on the Orient Express both attempt to lure older audiences back to cinemas in their openings.

Death on the Nile looks to be at No 1 with a muted US$12.8 million from 3,912 locations, while Marry Me followed with an expected US$8 million intake.

Disney and 20th Century Studios' Death on the Nile, based on the famous Agatha Christie novel, took in US$5.1 million last Friday (Feb 11), an underwhelming tally.

That's only half as much as the opening day gross of its predecessor Murder on the Orient Express (US$10.7 million), which eventually legged it out to a US$102 million domestic gross.

While Gal Gadot's character Linnet Ridgeway-Doyle may have enough champagne to fill the Nile in the film, it seems dubious that the whodunit could sell enough tickets to fill the US$90 million hole left by its production budget.

While sequels are usually expected to build on the financial success of their predecessors, the box office fate of Death on the Nile may have seemed pre-written for quite some time now.

The production was greenlit shortly after the release of Murder on the Orient Express and was subsequently inherited by Disney after the studio's acquisition of 20th Century Fox was finalised in 2019.

Many of Disney's projects rooted in the Fox era have been perceived as financial disappointments, with films like West Side Story, The Last Duel and The King's Man coming up short at the box office.

Additionally, the release has faced a litany of other issues, including several delays due to the Covid-19 pandemic and accusations of rape and sexual abuse levied against Armie Hammer, one of the film's more prominent stars.

The whodunit has had an extremely quiet rollout with little to no effort made at a press tour.

Directed by Kenneth Branagh, the adaptation follows the mustachioed detective Hercule Poirot (also Branagh) as he attempts to solve a murder on board a glamorous river cruise in Egypt.

The film boasts a deep cast of stars that includes Gadot, Annette Bening, Russell Brand and Letitia Wright.

Elsewhere, Marry Me was on track to debut in third place. The studio projected a US$8 million weekend gross from 3,642 locations.

While Death on the Nile is showing exclusively in cinemas, Marry Me is debuting day-and-date on NBCUniversal's streaming platform Peacock.

Romantic comedies hardly carry much box office weight anymore, with 2018's Crazy Rich Asians representing the last smash hit in the genre.

However, with a modest production budget of US$23 million, a "B+" CinemaScore indicating positive audience reception and both Valentine's Day and the President's Day holiday weekend on the horizon, Universal is anticipating a happy ending for the release.

Marry Me stars Lopez as a pop star who decides to get married to a total stranger (Owen Wilson) during one of her concerts. Together, the two must face Lopez's toxic ex and see if their shotgun wedding can turn into true love.

Meanwhile, the Liam Neeson-led action thriller Blacklight was estimated to bring in US$2.89 million from 2,772 locations in its domestic debut, opening outside the box office's top 5.

Sandwiched between the two top new releases is Jackass Forever, which should take the box office's runner-up slot with a projected US$8.3 million gross.

That's a 65 per cent drop from its debut the previous weekend, a figure that's roughly in line with the 58 per cent drop that its predecessor, Jackass 3D, faced in its sophomore outing in 2010. REUTERS