Quiet Place, Cruella fuel biggest US box office weekend of Covid era

Los Angeles

AFTER more than a year of delayed premieres, darkened theatres and financial pain, the US box office is finally starting to look like something close to normal.

Moviegoers made a strong comeback over the weekend to see two new major films on the big screen - an opportunity that has not been available since early 2020.

A Quiet Place Part II, released by Paramount Pictures, led the box office. Walt Disney's debut of Cruella, the 101 Dalmatians origin story, took second spot.

The past weekend was the biggest since the pandemic began more than a year ago, triggering the shutdown of most cinemas in North America in March 2020.

Domestic receipts for the top 10 films reached US$79.2 million from last Friday to Sunday, said researcher Comscore.

The haul is the most telling sign yet that viewers are ready to get off the couch and see movies on the big screen again.

Ahead of the weekend, major theatre chains, including AMC Entertainment, Regal Entertainment and Cinemark Holdings, removed their mask requirements for fully vaccinated guests, as announced on their websites.

"This was a banner weekend for the movie industry and an undeniable sign that movie theatres are back in business," said Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian.

The release of the two new films, coupled with rising consumer confidence and pent-up demand, drove the results, he said.

Comscore said A Quiet Place Part II, a sequel to the 2018 horror film starring Emily Blunt, made US$48.4 million over the three-day period from Friday to Sunday, higher than the estimate of US$42 million by Boxoffice Pro.

The longer Memorial Day holiday weekend in the US is expected to lift its four-day sales - including May 31 - to US$58.5 million.

The performance is almost on par with the 2018 debut for A Quiet Place, the first movie, which made US$50 million over the weekend. It managed to generate that revenue while only 71 per cent of US theatres are open, showed data from Comscore.

Disney's Cruella performance also exceeded industry estimates, despite it also being available to Disney+ customers online - for an extra US$30 fee.

The film, which stars Emma Stone in the title role, took in US$21.3 million this weekend after making US$1.4 million in a preview last Thursday.

The results are a much-needed jolt to a business that has come back in fits and starts.

Some releases have performed well in 2021, including Mortal Kombat and Godzilla vs Kong from AT&T's Warner Bros, despite the movies being available for viewing at home.

But with studios still cautious about putting their biggest blockbusters in theatres, some weekends have had no new releases. That has made it harder for the industry to build momentum.

A Quiet Place Part II is the first major movie a studio has released exclusively in theatres since Tenet, a Warner Bros sci-fi picture directed by Christopher Nolan that came out in September 2020.

That movie underperformed, putting a chill on the entire industry and leading studios to delay new films or find ways to get them online sooner than they had initially planned.

The Quiet Place sequel, directed by John Krasinski, was initially scheduled to come out in theatres on March 20, 2020, right as Covid-19 began to ravage the US.

It was delayed multiple times, but the studio rebuffed the idea of putting it online.

The film tells the story of a family navigating a world overrun by vicious aliens that attack anyone who makes a sound.

The first movie in the series was a surprise smash, ultimately selling more than US$330 million in tickets globally. BLOOMBERG