Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum’s screwball romantic comedy ‘The Lost City’ collected $31 million at North American theaters over the weekend, a promising sign that Netflix hasn’t completely seized on the meet-cute market.
Of course, Paramount, which is behind ‘The Lost City’, did not rely only on positive reviews – or the tease of Tatum’s bare behind – to fuel ticket sales. The on-screen chemistry between Bullock and Tatum, who were inescapable on social media, billboards, and in trailers while promoting the film, were key in getting audiences to cinemas.
‘The Lost City’, an original adventure that has been described as ‘Romancing the Stone’ meets ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, indicates that romantic comedies haven’t entirely fallen out of favor with moviegoers.
“This is an excellent opening,” says David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research. “Romantic comedies have been in decline for a dozen years, well before the pandemic. The combination of big cast plus crowd-pleasing romance plus comedy plus adventure has worked before, and it’s working again.”
‘The Lost City’ cost $68 million, which is fairly expensive for a rom-com. But Bullock and Tatum get compensated handsomely to headline in movies.
Aaron and Adam Nee directed ‘The Lost City’, an amorous action-adventure that takes place in a remote tropical jungle. The story follows Bullock as Loretta Sage, a middle-aged author who gets kidnapped by an eccentric billionaire (Daniel Radcliffe, in a villainous role) in the hopes she can discover the ancient lost city’s treasure from her latest story. Ticket buyers were mostly receptive to ‘The Lost City’, which landed a ‘B+’ CinemaScore.
At the domestic box office, ‘The Lost City’
took down reigning champion ‘The Batman’, which held the No. 1 spot for three weekends in a row. The superhero adventure, starring Robert Pattinson, took in $20 million between Friday and Sunday, enough for second place. Those ticket sales, a 44% decline from last weekend, are still strong considering the movie has already been playing in theaters for a month. ‘The Batman’ has generated $332 million in North America to date.
In third place, the Indian war epic ‘RRR’ – stands for Roudram Ranam Rudhiram – grossed approximately $10 million from 1,200 theaters in its North American debut. That footprint marks one of the widest domestic rollouts for an Indian movie. ‘RRR’, which clocks in over three hours, cost $73 million to produce.
Tom Holland’s video game adaptation ‘Uncharted’ and Crunchyroll’s manga adaptation ‘Jujutsu Kaisen 0: The Movie’ took spots four and five, respectively on box office charts.
In its sixth weekend of release, ‘Uncharted’ brought in $4.9 million from 3,416 cinemas, boosting its North American tally to $133.5 million.
‘Jujutsu Kaisen 0’, an otherwise under-the-radar anime film, amassed $4.5 million from 2,430 locations. It’s a huge 73% decline in ticket sales from the movie’s $17.6 million debut. Still, ‘Jujutsu Kaisen 0’ has earned a solid $27 million to date.
Elsewhere, A24’s action-adventure-comedy-fantasy-sci-fi mashup ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ earned $509,659 from just 10 screens in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco – translating to $50,965 per screen.
It marks the biggest limited opening weekend of the year, as well as one of the best starts ever for A24.
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