Knocks Avatar out of top spot Friday! Update $30m OW

https://deadline.com/2023/01/box-office-m3gan-avatar-the-way-of-water-1235212918/

Universal/Blumhouse’s M3GAN won Friday with $11.7M, taking its weekend projections to $27.5M. All of this was built on the back of 2D admission prices, since Avatar: The Way of Water has all the Imax and PLF screens. Marvelous. Hopefully, the horror fans don’t have this front-loaded.

CinemaScore at a solid B (horror fan are always hard) is very good, and higher than the 3 1/2 stars on Comscore/Screen Engine’s PostTrak. Universal did a spectacular job here making a creepy doll film for the TikTok generation. If someone is dancing in your movie, and you can market it on TikTok, consider it a win. The protag’s droopy dance caught on like wild fire out of the first trailer — and this was without the studio doing a #MeganDanceChallenage.

Story so much better and more fun. It also felt satisfyingly long even though only 90 mins

M3GAN is a much better, more entertaining film than Avatar Way of the Water. It accomplishes more with a lot less money and a much shorter runtime.

A bona-fide, economical smash. That's how Universal rollls!

A $30 million opening weekend is brilliant. Above expectations.

Its deemed very entertaining. People like it.