Box office: Night Swim joins a post-holiday top ten list that mostly treads water

Anyone But You is becoming a word-of-mouth hit, The Color Purple is sinking fast, and two new films have joined the $100 million club.

Wyatt Russell tests the New Year’s box-office waters in Night Swim.

And, we’re back to the holding pattern!

After a few weeks with a lot of big new holiday releases, things got pretty quiet at the box office again this week.

There was only one major new film—the low-budget horror flick Night Swim, which landed in 2nd place with $12 million—while the rest of the top ten looked more or less the same as it did before: nearly every film made less money this week compared to previous weeks, but they all held their positions, for the most part.

There were, however, a few significant exceptions to that rule:

• Anyone But You, a romantic comedy that got off to a slow start the weekend before Christmas, surprised a lot of people by making more money this week than it did in either of its first two weekends. That’s virtually unheard of, and it suggests that that film is becoming a word-of-mouth hit.

• Meanwhile, the musical version of The Color Purple—which had the second-best Christmas Day opening ever just two weeks ago—fell down the charts to land at 7th place in its second full weekend at the box office.

• Also noteworthy: the R-rated sci-fi comedy Poor Things, which won two Golden Globes last night, re-entered the top ten in its fifth week, despite playing in only a fraction of the theatres that all the other films are playing in.

There were a few other milestones this weekend:

• The #1 film, for the third time in four weeks, was the musical prequel Wonka, which grossed an estimated $14.4 million and raised its domestic cume to $164.7 million. Wonka is the first film since Barbie to top the list in its fourth week, and it will probably soon be one of the top ten films released in 2023.

• Meanwhile, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, which landed in 3rd place with $10.6 million, and Trolls Band Together, which landed in 14th place with $1.2 million, both raised their North American totals to a smidge over $100 million. That means there are now 24 films released last year that have passed the century mark—and I suspect at least one more film will join their ranks in the near future.

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: