The long wait for the Uncharted movie sure has paid off, at least for the studio. A video game adaptation over a decade in the making, Uncharted exceeded expectations and is estimated to make $45 million across the extended Presidents' Day weekend. The film’s three-day tally of $40 million is higher than the $35 million that was estimated going into its debut weekend.
The unexpectedly strong opening marks a back-to-back win for Sony and star Tom Holland, who is coming off one of the biggest hits of all time. Uncharted isn’t his only film in the top five this weekend; Spider-Man: No Way Home is estimated to make $9.1 million across four days, finishing at the number three spot in its 10th weekend.
Uncharted has had an infamously troubled road to release. At one point, Holland’s co-star Mark Wahlberg was supposed to play protagonist Nathan Drake, but the project kept stalling after several directors dropped out for various reasons. Over the years, David O. Russell, Seth Gordon, Neil Burger, Shawn Levy, Dan Trachtenberg, and Travis Knight were all attached before Sony landed on in-house talent Ruben Fleischer, who’d previously directed two Zombieland films, 30 Minutes or Less and the massively successful Venom for the studio.
Uncharted’s debut is also particularly solid for a video game adaptation; a category of films that has had a notoriously difficult time finding the respect and success that it wants. The 2018 Tomb Raider reboot, for instance, debuted with under $24 million in its opening weekend. Duncan Jones’ Warcraft had a three-day opening in the same vicinity back in 2016. Sonic the Hedgehog was an outlier, with a spectacular $70 million four-day opening over the Presidents' Day weekend in 2020.
Like Uncharted, the weekend’s number two movie, Dog, also exceeded expectations. Helmed by Channing Tatum and his longtime creative partner Reid Carolin in their directorial debuts, Dog made $14.4 million over four days. The crowd-pleaser earned an A- CinemaScore.
Sony’s No Way Home tailed not far behind. But the big news this past week came when it overtook James Cameron’s Avatar to become the third-highest grossing movie of all time. No Way Home has made $772 million domestically since its mid-December debut, and has dominated the box office virtually every week since then.
Disney’s inherited Fox title, the older-skewing holdover Death on the Nile made an estimated $7.6 million over four days in its second weekend, after topping its first. The film’s running domestic total stands at $26.3 million, which is slightly less than what its predecessor, Murder on the Orient Express, which debuted in 2017. Both films are based on classic detective novels by Agatha Christie, and feature director-star Kenneth Branagh—recently Oscar-nominated for his semi-autobiographical film Belfast—in the lead role as famed detective Hercule Poirot. The film was understandably a tough sell at a time when its target audience is still clearly hesitant about venturing outside.
Paramount’s Jackass Forever rounded out the top five with an estimated $6.1 million across four days, taking its running domestic total to $47.6 million. That’s a solid result for a movie that cost a reported $10 million to make and comes over a decade after the last main entry in a franchise believed to be dormant. And albeit on a smaller scale to Sony’s one-two punch of Spider-Man and Uncharted, it marks a back-to-back win for the struggling Paramount after January’s Scream, which finished this weekend at the number eight spot.
Uncharted will likely repeat next weekend, before The Batman takes the box office by storm on March 4. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.