Current Events > WBO: Bullet Train #1 with $30m; Top Gun: Maverick passes Titanic

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https://variety.com/2022/film/news/box-office-bullet-train-brad-pitt-easter-sunday-1235335453/

Bullet Train, a John Wick-ian romp with Brad Pitt in the aisle seat, arrived in theaters with a $30.1 million opening weekend. Thats enough to top the domestic box office chart, but its only a so-so result given Bullet Trains $90 million price tag and Pitts star power. The Sony Pictures release will need to maintain its momentum in the coming weeks as it tries to break even or turn a profit.

Bullet Train is trying to prove that an action flick that isnt based on a comic book or a toy-line can defy the odds and resonate with audiences. But part of the issue for the film is that critics werent on board. Bullet Train landed a mediocre 41% approval rating on review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, with many reviewers faulting the movie for being overly derivative of the work of Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino. Variety chief film critic Peter Debruge was mixed on Bullet Train, writing that neither the characters nor the film they inhabit are particularly deep.

Bullet Train was directed by David Leitch, who once served as a stunt double for Pitt before moving on to oversee the likes of Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2. It centers on a hapless hitman whose mission to nab a suitcase full of cash on high-speed train in Japan, devolves into double crosses and brutal fights with an army of competing killers, thieves and social deviants.

Universal and Amblins Easter Sunday, the weekends other major release, stumbled in its opening frame, earning a meagre $5.3 million for an eighth place finish on domestic charts. Easter Sunday stars stand-up comic Jo Koy as an actor who attends his dysfunctional Filipino American familys Easter Sunday celebration. The good news for Universal and Amblin is Easter Sunday was a modest bet, carrying a price tag of $17 million.

DC League of Super-Pets, an animated offering from Warner Bros., nabbed second place with $11.2 million. After two weeks, Super-Pets boasts a domestic gross of $45.1 million, a disappointing result given its $90 million production budget. Under its new corporate owner, Warner Bros. Discovery is looking to shake up its cinematic universe of DC Comics characters, a change of course that resulted in the companys controversial decision this week to scrap Batgirl after the movie had been completed. Instead of debuting on HBO Max as originally planned or being retro-fitted for a theatrical run, the film will now become a tax write-down.

Universals Nope came in third with $8.5 million. That brings the twisty UFO thriller from Jordan Peele to $97.9 million at the domestic box office, an impressive result for a movie that, like Bullet Train, wasnt derived from some preexisting piece of IP. Disney and Marvels Thor: Love and Thunder and Universal and Illuminations Minions: Rise of Gru rounded out the top five, earning $7.6 million and $7.1 million, respectively. That brings the Thor sequels stateside total to $316.1 million, while the Despicable Me spinoff has now earned $334.6 million domestically.

In limited release, Bodies Bodies Bodies grossed $226,526 on 6 screens in New York and Los Angeles, which came out to a $37,754 per-screen average. The A24 horror film follows a group of rich 20-somethings at a hurricane party at a remote family mansion that becomes the locus of a lot of blood-letting. The ensemble cast features former SNL star Pete Davidson, The Hate U Gives Amandla Stenberg and Borat 2 breakout Maria Bakalova.

On the milestone front, Paramounts Top Gun: Maverick supplanted Titanic as the seventh-biggest film ever at the domestic box office, earning $662 million in ticket sales. The sequel, now in its eleventh week of release, added $7 million to its total. The film is the highest-grossing release of Tom Cruises career and, thanks to a lucrative profit-sharing pact, stands to leave him more than $100 million richer.

The domestic box office has experienced an impressive rebound in recent months; its a resurgence fueled by hits such as Top Gun: Maverick and Jurassic World: Dominion. The bad news for theaters is that Bullet Train is the last big-budget, major studio film this summer and theres about the be a veritable desert when it comes to populist fare. Studio executives and theater owners privately say that there wont be another blockbuster until Black Adam opens on Oct. 21. Thats a long time to wait, particularly for an exhibition industry thats still trying to shake off the lingering impact of COVID closures and diminished attendance..