Box office: Mean Girls beats The Beekeeper in a tight race to see who can be the lowest-grossing #1 film since 2022

This was the second weekend in a row with no new major studio releases, and the week's new Oscar nominations didn't offer that much of a bump.

This was almost the #1 movie of the week. Jason Statham in The Beekeeper.

A beekeeper almost dethroned a queen bee at the box office this week.

There was a tight race for the top spot this past weekend, as the action thriller The Beekeeper and the musical remake of Mean Girls both reported weekend estimates of just under $7.5 million yesterday morning.

At the time, The Beekeeper seemed to have a slight edge over Mean Girls, but both films fell behind their estimates when the actual figures were reported this morning, and Mean Girls ended up coming out on top with a mere $6.9 million.

This was the first time since September 2022 that the #1 movie made less than $8 million, and it’s only the fifth time since the movies really started to come back post-Covid (in the summer of 2021) that the #1 movie made less than $10 million.¹

The reason for such a dismal performance at the top of the chart? Most obviously, this was the second week in a row with no new releases from the major studios, thanks in part to all the movies that got delayed because of last year’s strikes.

There was also not much of a boost from the films that got Oscar nominations last week, which generally fell into one of two camps: major blockbusters that came out months ago and are already widely available on home video (e.g. Oppenheimer), and artier or indie-style films that either appeal to a smaller audience or are still patiently growing their audiences (e.g. Poor Things, American Fiction).

Box-office prospects for the next two weeks don’t look much better. The closest thing to a major-studio release before Valentine’s Day is next week’s Argylle—and that film was produced by Apple, which is getting Universal to distribute the film the same way Paramount distributed Killers of the Flower Moon and Sony distributed Napoleon.

Interestingly, next week will also bring the theatrical release of the first three episodes of The Chosen Season 4, from the hit series about Jesus and his followers. For the first time ever, an entire season is going to premiere in theatres, with three episodes on February 1, three more on February 15, and the last two on February 29.

Ironically, there used to be a lot of talk about streaming being the death of theatres. But these days, with the notable exception of Netflix, it often seems like the various streaming services are doing what they can to fill the gaps left by the studios. (Heck, even Mean Girls was originally greenlit for a streaming service…)

But we’ll have more to say about that next week.

In the meantime, there were a few things worth noting on this week’s chart:

• The Book of Clarence fell behind Journey to Bethlehem for the first time.

• Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is now the only DC Extended Universe movie of the decade to gross over $400 million worldwide.

• Migration, which became available to rent or own digitally last week, is now the 25th movie of 2023 to gross over $100 million domestically.

The figures are from Box Office Mojo; the chart is my own.

And now, a few more stats and facts re: this week’s top ten, title by title: