‘Jumanji: The Next Level’ Unseats ‘Frozen 2’ at the Box Office

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/15/arts/jumanji-the-next-level-box-office.html

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For the second time this year, Dwayne Johnson is in the biggest movie in the United States and Canada.

After leading the summer box-office hit “Hobbs & Shaw,” he now stars in “Jumanji: The Next Level,” an adventure comedy distributed by Sony that grossed an estimated $60.1 million in domestic ticket sales Friday through Sunday. The film unseated “Frozen 2” to claim the top spot at the domestic box office.

In addition to bringing back Johnson, “Next Level” reunited Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan and Jack Black, the bankable cast who appeared in “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” a 2017 reboot that made about $404.5 million during its run in domestic theaters. “Next Level” is off to a good start in replicating that success — though it will have to compete with the Death Star-sized “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” premiering next week, which might kill its momentum.

In “Next Level,” the actors don’t exactly reprise their roles from “Welcome to the Jungle”: As avatars in a video game, they take on the mannerisms of the people who control them, and the new movie introduces gamers played by Danny DeVito and Danny Glover. (The Rock does a pretty good DeVito.)

Critical response was lukewarm — “Jumanji: The Next Level” holds a 66 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. “It’s got some sweet moments,” Glenn Kenny wrote in his review for The New York Times, “and the cast, as it did in the previous picture, enjoys itself at least semi-infectiously. But the action sequences are lifeless; the lessons valid but arguably stale; and the trimmings, mere bloat.”

[Read our critic’s review of “Jumanji: The Next Level.”]

Landing in fourth place was Clint Eastwood’s “Richard Jewell.” That movie, a drama distributed by Warner Bros., debuted this weekend to a modest estimated $5 million in ticket sales.

The other newcomer in the top five is Universal’s “Black Christmas,” which came in fifth with an estimated $4.4 million in sales according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. “Black Christmas,” directed by Sophia Takal, is a #MeToo-minded rethink of a 1974 college slasher.

Neither “Richard Jewell” nor “Black Christmas” was able to overtake Lionsgate’s “Knives Out,” a whodunit from the director Rian Johnson that brought in an estimated $9.3 million in ticket sales this weekend, its third in theaters. That movie landed in third place, behind Disney’s “Frozen 2,” which was in its fourth weekend and sold about $19.2 million in tickets.