Box Office Week: Maze Runner: The Death Cure takes #1 with $23.5M, the lowest opening of the franchise. Meanwhile, Hostiles expands to a solid $10.2M at #3, The Shape of Water cracks the top 10 at #8 with $5.7M, and Padmaavat hits #10 with $4.2M in just 325 theaters.

RankTitleDomestic Gross (Weekend)Worldwide Gross (Cume)Week #1Maze Runner: The Death Cure$23,500,000$105,500,00012Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle$16,400,000$822,057,20363Hostiles$10,205,000$12,052,79564The Greatest Showman$9,500,000$259,516,28465The Post$8,850,000$83,035,9236Notable Box Office Stories:Maze Runner: The Death Cure - The last of the Maze Runner films and likely the last of this extremely specific YA craze has opened to #1 with $23.5M, a series low. The Maze Runner franchise was always the red-headed stepchild of the odd YA dystopia boom kicked off by The Hunger Games. While Hunger Games had huge box office returns and Divergent had a weirdly stacked cast of young actors, Maze Runner's claim to fame was "hey at least it's cheap" with the first entry costing just $34M and the other two costing around $60M each. Of course the even stranger part is just where Death Cure lies in the history of this odd genre boom. The film was originally set to be released in February 2017 but had to be put on hold when its lead actor had an on-set injury that forced shooting to stop as he recovered. However even before that the film was always going to be the last entry in all three of them major franchises of this boom (thankfully Maze Runner decided not to split up it's final novel into two film entries like Hunger Games and Divergent) and the lead up to its release was rough for its successors. First was Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 which certainly wasn't a bomb, opening over $100M and closing to over $250M, but it wasn't exactly a smash either. The film was the lowest grosser of the series which is a pretty bad sign when your victory lap closes worse than your opening. But then the real bombshell hit with one of the most spectacular franchise bombs of all time when The Divergent Series: Allegiant grossed just half of the previous entry despite opening on the exact same weekend, with a final domestic gross of just $66M on a $142M budget. This of course caused the final film (The Divergent Series: Ascendant) to be scrapped to television and there has still been no word if even that will ever see the light of day.Maze Runner: The Death Cure (cont.) - All that is to say the context for Death Cure was rough. The bottom of this genre fell out hard and Death Cure had the added disadvantage of a full extra year past the expiration date. So it's no wonder the opening was the worst of the series. That said the openings have never been great with the first one scoring $32.5M and then decreasing from there. The other advantage Death Cure has is that the franchise always had pretty solid pulls overseas with the last two making over $200M internationally. Maze Runner seems right on track with $82M so far in international sales, mostly led by China and South Korea. So weirdly Death Cure looks to come out unscathed, eeking out the same margin of profit as the previous two. It's smart that Fox knew that the Maze Runner crowd would never be huge. Already the film's have made $766M on a combined budget of $137M (less than the cost of The Divergent Series: Ascendant or The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2). Maze Runner is a shocking case of restraint in a brand that managed to actually weather the dystopia YA bubble and finish off the genre with a weird but dignified note.Hostiles - Usually when a film is a potential Oscar contender with zero buzz expanding into wide release into January it spells disaster, but the latest from director Scott Cooper was a bit of a surprise this weekend opening at #3 with $10.2M. The revisionist western about a U.S. Cavalry officer escorting a Cheyenne war chief home has received lukewarm reviews but has had a great marketing campaign push in order to sell this not as an Oscar never-was but as an interesting adult fare in the usually dead months of January. As the final big release of 2017, Hostiles didn't quite reach its intended $12M goal set by the studio and with a B rating on Cinemascore it might have a long road to climb to reach its estimated budget of $50M. Still it's a lot better pull than expected but its going to have to find the right audience if it doesn't want to drop hard for Superbowl weekend.Padmaavat - There's something very fascinating about Indian film and especially Bollywood films in that for how immensely important they are to their native countries and citizens abroad they rarely have any crossover in any other cultures (more on that later) especially in the US. Because of that it's really telling just how much the Indian population in the US has exploded in the last ten years as Padmaavat became the best opening ever for a Bollywood film opening at #10 with $4.2M. Most impressively the film was in just 325 theaters, most of them IMAX to show off what is the most expensive Bollywood film of all time to this point, so the average ticket price was likely close to $15 - $18. That is one element about the Bollywood and Indian culture boom in the US, which has seen more and more TV channels and terrestrial radio station playing to exclusively to Indian audiences, is that Indian ex-pats tend to be incredibly well paid and willing to spend. Where there is money to be made there are markets to exploit and Bollywood and Indian film in general are slowly advancing in those regards. In fact in China the results have been even more surprising as the country has taken a deep love to one of India's biggest stars Amir Kahn who's last two films (Dangal and Secret Superstar) have grossed over $100M in China each. It will be very interesting to watch what Padmaavat does in the US, especially since the film has been pretty controversial for its misogynistic tone which may not play to the young, more Americanized second generation Indians who drive a lot of these sales. But more interesting is where the bigger picture goes from here. Indian film seems primed to be the first country to really have a consistent foothold for its film imports in the US and as each bigger and more expensive new release climbs the charts what will become of the divide between non-Indian and Indian audiences will be fascinating to witness.Oscar Movie Round-up - This weekend saw the first outing for the Oscar contender since the nominations for the big night happened on Tuesday, so let's get to every Best Picture nominee still out there (which is technically all of them). First up is The Post which was shut out of a lot of key nominations like Director, Actor, and Screenplay but did still get a Best Picture nom. Perhaps that lack of hype and it dropping out of the frontrunner race is why the film dropped 24.5% this weekend to come in with $8.8M which still made it the highest grossing Oscar release this weekend. Next up is The Shape of Water which scored the most nominations this year which perfectly timed with its much anticipated wide release. The film added 1,000 theaters and finally crept into the top 10 at #8 with $5.7M, a 160% increase from last weekend. That puts it right in line with other "most nominations" film's post nom weekend though on the slightly higher end of increase. Usually we have a two film race for Best Picture and despite this being the most up-in-the-air year for the BP run, there does seem to be a Shape of Water v Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri race brewing (both films notably released by Fox Searchlight) as Water scored a PGA win while Billboards won the SAG and Golden Globes top prizes. Billboards was surprisingly shut out of Director but it still managed a ton of nominations including Best Picture. The film celebrated by adding 500+ theaters and grossed $3.7M, which isn't quite where it was when it was at 1,500 theaters before ($4.2M) but it's close. Next up are some of the surprise nominations starting with Phantom Thread, the first Best Picture nomination for critical darling Paul Thomas Anderson in a decade. However once again audiences just could not care as despite the film adding 125 theaters it dropped 11% earning $2.8M. At very least it's now entered the usual range of PTA domestic grosses of $10M - $25M with $10.6M so far. Another surprise BP nom was Darkest Hour which seemed like it would only score a Best Actor nom but surprised with six nominations, mostly in technical categories but of course securing two of the biggest ones of Actor and Best Picture. Audiences however didn't seem to care for the surprise as the film dropped 20% this weekend coming in with $2.1M.Oscar Movie Round-up (cont.) -Next up is Lady Bird which scored a surprise Best Director nomination, only the fifth woman in history to do so, plus the coveted Best Picture and Best Actress noms. A24 took the occasion to add 500 theaters where it gained 61.2% for $1.9M weekend. That pushes its domestic gross to $41.6M, becoming the first A24 film to cross $40M domestic and it will be interesting to see if it can manage to become the first to pass $50M. Interestingly Lady Bird and Three Billboards have been in lock step almost all season and this weekend both had basically the same theater count and expansion but Three Billboards ended up making almost twice Lady Bird's weekend. Guess people prefer their female leads angry and violent over sad and listening to Dave Matthews. Next is Call Me by Your Name which seems to be the critical darling that got the most snubs this year (other than Blade Runner 2049, stop typing) but did still get the major Picture and Actor noms. However as mentioned last week the film took way to long to expand past a dozen or so theaters and now that it's not the frontrunner in any category besides Best Adapted Screenplay it's suffering. This weekend the film dropped 6.4% to make $1.3M. Finally the two highest grossing Best Picture nominees, Dunkirk and Get Out, decided to try for rereleases to earn a little extra from their hype. Get Out became one of the only horror films ever nominated for Best Picture and one of the only horror films to have been nominated for Best Director. Director Jordan Peele also became the third ever director nominated for his first film and the only black director nominated for his first film. So with all that hype the film tried for a 468 theater re-release this weekend and the results weren't stellar, earning $170K with a per theater average of just $363. That said I don't think Peele will be too worried. Dunkirk also saw a re-release this weekend but strangely did not report its numbers so I'm going to just assume literally no one rewatched it in the world ever. So strange.Films Reddit Wants to FollowThis is a segment where we keep a weekly tally of currently showing films that aren't in the Top 5 that fellow redditors want updates on. If you'd like me to add a film to this chart, make a comment in this thread.TitleDomestic Gross (Cume)Worldwide Gross (Cume)BudgetWeek #Thor: Ragnarok$313,696,009$851,904,921$180M13Justice League$227,743,346$655,543,346$300M11Coco$202,753,237$680,553,237$175M10Star Wars: The Last Jedi$610,725,821$1,311,425,821$200M7Notable Film ClosingsTitleDomestic GrossWorldwide GrossBudgetRoman J. Israel, Esq.$11,917,581$11,917,581$22MThe Man Who Invented Christmas$5,676,110$8,090,873unkJust Getting Started$6,069,605$6,709,821$22MYou can read my latest piece at The Numbers: Does Having The Most Oscar Nominations Affect Box Office Performance?As always /r/boxoffice is a great place to share links and other conversations about box office news.Also you can see the archive of all Box Office Week posts at /r/moviesboxoffice. via /r/movies http://ift.tt/2Gs6zpC