Happy Sunday! Yes sir! It is totally Sunday as I post this! Don’t be gaslit by the calendar app on your phone! IT’S SUNDAY!!!!!

Once again, our number one movie is Avatar: Fire and Ash. It may not be as massive as its ancestors, but dammit, no one can dominate the box office like Superman’s Pal Jimmy Cameron. Current tally is $342 stateside and $1.2 billion globally. You could even make a case that Avatar is what’s keeping the box office alive right now, as our openers didn’t quite meet even the slim expectations they had going for them. Well, kind of.

Yes, Primate is our “winner” of the newcomers with an opening of $11 million (including Thursday previews and “Monday Mystery Movie” screenings). That’s…not terrible. But for whatever reason, tracking was all over the place with this one. Following some strong early screenings for fans of the genre, some were expecting for this to be able to top $20 million. That wasn’t going to happen, as at the end of the day, the pitch here was pretty much “hey, you know the one scene from Nope that went viral? Well, what if we made an entire movie of that?” I make fun, but I do think Primate looks like a good time, but it’s not a good sign going forward that the only thing anyone is talking about is YouTuber/Influencer/Leaker Grace Randolph’s “review” she posted on Rotten Tomatoes despite leaving only two thirds into the movie.

Meanwhile, Greenland 2: Migration (ugh, and what a terrible coincidence that everyone is talking about Greenland now for other, far more stupid reasons) also performs below where some tracking had it. The original movie is quite well-liked and got a strong critical reception, but fuck me, I had to look up when it came out, and the reason I don’t remember how it played in theater is because it…didn’t go to theaters in the states. Yup. It’s a 2020 release that got sent straight to streaming. In any case, audiences aren’t migrating to theaters for this one, which opened to just $8.5 million against a production budget of….$90 million??? What the fuck. International grosses are going to have to save this one.

Finally, the holidays might be over (technically), but that doesn’t mean those leftovers aren’t still delivering. The Housemaid, Zootopia 2, and Marty Supreme are all continuing to do strong business (even if Marty Supreme has already left my local theater, for whatever reason). Next weekend, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple attempts to invade the MLK weekend, but given how divisive the last entry in the franchise was, I wouldn’t rule out Avatar having a fifth box office victory.

Anyway, the top ten (well, twelve), via The Numbers