The Boss Baby is looking like it could take it's second weekend in a row, if the tallies for Friday are to be believed. This would not necessarily be a head-turner if not for the fact that this weekend saw a major kids franchise - Smurfs - put out a new title, Smurfs: The Lost Village. From far away, one might expect families to pack in for the latest animated picture after both Beauty and the Beast and The Boss Baby had their weekends in the sun, but this looks to be the time for babies voiced by Alec Baldwin.
DreamWorks' surprise hit came in with $25 million on Friday, beating out Beauty and the Beast's still-impressive $21 million take. The third place trophy goes to Zach Braff's Going in Style remake at $4.2 million, which narrowly passed Smurfs: The Lost Village's $4.1 million. Despite the close race on Friday, Smurfs is expected to climb up to the third spot by the end of the weekend, with Going in Style taking the fourth spot. And though I have more than a few choice words for Braff, one does have to marvel at the fact that he was able to make a movie that might as well be called The Forgettables into a small money-maker. That being said, there's little doubt in my mind that Michael Caine, Alan Arkin, and Morgan Freeman were the reason people are showing up for a movie I was certain would die a slow death at the box office.
Finally, in the fifth spot, there's Ghost in the Shell with $2.1 million, which will actually have to struggle to keep itself in the top five this week. Power Rangers is in the sixth spot now with close to $1.7, and when Sunday hits, it might turn out to be right down to the wire as to what exactly will make up the top five. For all of Ghost in the Shell's visual wonderment, and there are some inarguably fantastic sequences in the film, the movie just doesn't work on the whole, thanks to a deeply problematic script and a general disinterest in actually talking about the future of robotics, AI, and the possibility of technological overload. In comparison, even Power Rangers looks like a more mature property.
