John Krasinski’s thriller A Quiet Place scared up a huge opening weekend, surprising box-office pundits with a $50 million debut.
For the third straight week, there’s a new box-office champion — but there’s no need to get loud about it.
Paramount Pictures’ thriller A Quiet Place shocked box-office experts with a $50 million opening weekend that gave it the second biggest debut of the year (after Black Panther). Directed and co-written by John Krasinski, who also stars in the film opposite his wife, Emily Blunt, A Quiet Place had some positive buzz going into the weekend, but no one expected it to be one of the year’s biggest premieres.
The film, which follows a small family that struggles to live their lives in silence due to mysterious creatures that hunt by sound, earned glowing reviews from professional critics (97-percent “Fresh” on RottenTomatoes) and a positive response (“B+” grade on CinemaScore) from audiences. With the film’s price tag reported to be around $17 million, it’s not just a big debut for A Quiet Place, it’s an extremely profitable start to an already successful run.
Although Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One made a surprising fall to second place, it only dropped 40 percent in ticket sales from last week’s premiere, and it managed to bring its worldwide box-office earnings past $391 million — which isn’t too shabby at all. That suggests that it’s far from “Game Over” for Ready Player One.
As for the weekend’s other new releases, raunchy comedy Blockers debuted in third place and earned positive reviews from critics and audiences, while political thriller Chappaquiddick performed similarly well with both groups. The latter film began its run in seventh place.
Also noteworthy was the continued success of Black Panther, which moved past Titanic to become the third highest-grossing movie of all time in U. S. theaters. It will likely finish its run in that spot, as almost $100 million separates it from second-place film Avatar.
Given the surprising debut of A Quiet Place, anything’s possible at this point, but Rampage opens this week in theaters with the star power of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson supporting it. Horror film Truth or Dare also hits theaters, but the smart money is on Rampage to smash its way to the top and give us yet another new box-office champion.
