'Bohemian Rhapsody' Rocks The Box Office In Its Opening Weekend

Despite its lukewarm reviews of the last few weeks, 20th Century Fox’s Bohemian Rhapsody has strutted its way across the box office weekend and struck an epic power stance. It hauled in an impressive $50 million at the domestic box office in its opening weekend, soundly beating its estimated tracking of $35 million by a considerable $15 million. That beats previous musical opener, A Star Is Born, by $7 million (which still had a solid domestic opening at $43 million). Adding in the international total brings Rhapsody up to a $123 million debut globally – not too shabby for a movie that saw an intensely troubled production after languishing in development hell for years.

Coming in second place at the box office this weekend was Disney’s The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, which pulled in $20 million, a somewhat disappointing haul for the visually stunning spectacle starring Mackenzie Foy, Kiera Knightley, Morgan Freeman, and Meryl Streep. Despite lavish costumes and gorgeous world-building, it’s less than Disney might have hoped for. But fear not, as it has the potential to have legs over the next few weekends, especially as November slides its way closer to Thanksgiving week when family fare really kicks off.

In third place was Nobody’s Fool, the Tiffany Haddish-starring comedy from Paramount, which snagged $14 million, a modest but respectable take considering its budget. It’s the only pure comedy on the theatrical map right now, so it will likely continue to pull in audiences even beyond opening weekend.

Rounding out the weekend were A Star Is Born and Halloween, both of which netted around $11 million, and Venom, which eked out another almost $8 million to add to its surprising box office total of $541 million worldwide. Those are solid numbers for three movies that have already met or exceeded expectations in three separate genres, showing that the landscape of the box office continues to change, and it’s not as easy to predict what will fly and what will flop.

Will Overlord, Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch and The Girl In The Spider’s Web be enough to unseat the three box office champions next weekend? We’ll find out in a week.