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LOS ANGELES: The John Wick-inspired adventure Bullet Train, starring Brad Pitt in the aisle seat, debuted in theatres to a $30.1 million opening weekend. Given Bullet Train"s $90 million price tag and Pitt"s star power, that"s enough to win the domestic box office, but it"s an average performance. In order to break even or make a profit in the upcoming weeks, the Sony Pictures release will need to maintain its momentum.

According to Jeff Bock, a senior media expert with Exhibitor Relations, "a big film like this with a lot of potential should have had a bigger debut." Despite this, August has little competition, thus Bullet Train should have a strong opportunity to establish itself in the following days.

The Brad Pitt-starring film aims to disprove the conventional wisdom that an action movie that isn"t based on a well-known property can"t succeed in the box office. But the fact that critics didn"t support the movie is one of its problems. On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, Bullet Train received a meagre 54 percent approval rating, with many reviewers criticising the film for being excessively unoriginal. Bullet Train received mixed reviews from Variety"s top film critic Peter Debruge, who stated that "neither the characters nor the film they occupy are very profound."

David Leitch, who previously worked as Brad Pitt"s stunt double before directing movies like Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2, directed the movie. The story revolves around a helpless hitman whose attempt to steal a suitcase full of cash off a high-speed train in Japan turns into a series of double crosses and vicious fights with a horde of other assassins, thieves, and criminals.

Easter Sunday from Universal and Amblin, the weekend"s second major release, struggled in its first week, taking in a pitiful $5.3 million and landing in eighth place domestically. Jo Koy, a stand-up comedian, plays an actor in Easter Sunday who attends the holiday with his dysfunctional Filipino-American family.

Easter Sunday was a modest gamble for Universal and Amblin, costing $17 million, which is fantastic news for them. The movie office performance of comedies, always a consistent draw, has declined recently. In fact, Easter Sunday is the only major studio comedy having a theatrical release this summer, demonstrating how out of favour the genre has become.

With $11.2 million, Warner Bros." animated film DC League of Super-Pets came in second. Super-Pets has a domestic total of $45.1 million after two weeks, which is underwhelming given its $90 million production budget. Warner Bros. Discovery is trying to freshen up its DC Comics character cinematic universe under its new corporate owner, a change in strategy that led to the company"s contentious choice this week to abandon Batgirl after the movie had been finished. The movie will now be a tax write-down rather than making its HBO Max debut as originally intended or being modified for a theatrical release.

Nope from Universal came in third place with $8.5 million. This brings the suspenseful UFO thriller from Jordan Peele to $97.9 million at the domestic box office, an outstanding performance for a film that wasn"t based on any already-existing intellectual property.

Thor: Love and Thunder from Disney and Marvel and Minions: Rise of Gru from Universal and Illumination completed the top five with earnings of $7.6 million and $7.1 million, respectively. The MCU adventure has now made $316.1 million in domestic ticket sales, while the Horrible Me spinoff has officially brought in $334.6 million.

Bodies Bodies Bodies earned $226,526 during its limited run on 6 theatres in New York and Los Angeles, averaging $37,754 per screen. The A24 horror movie centres on a group of affluent 20-somethings attending a hurricane party at a secluded family house, where there is a lot of bloodshed. Pete Davidson, a former SNL cast member, Amandla Stenberg, and Maria Bakalova, a breakout star from Borat 2, are among the ensemble cast members.

With $662 million in US box office receipts, Paramount"s Top Gun: Maverick has officially surpassed Titanic to take over as the seventh-biggest movie ever. In its eleventh week of distribution, the sequel increased its overall revenue by $7 million. The movie is Tom Cruise"s highest-grossing release of his career and is expected to make him over $100 million richer thanks to a hefty profit-sharing agreement.

In recent months, the domestic film office has made a stunning comeback, propelled by hits like Top Gun: Maverick and Jurassic World Dominion. The bad news for theatres is that Bullet Train is the final high-profile, major studio movie of the summer, and there will soon be a virtual lack of popular fare. There won"t be another blockbuster until Black Adam releases on October 21 or Black Panther: Wakanda Forever opens on November 11, according to studio officials and theatre owners in the dark. That"s a long time to wait, especially for an industry that relies on exhibitions and is still recovering from Covid closures and declining attendance.

According to Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at ComScore, "we need to manage expectations." "The following three months won"t be like the prior three. We won"t see another blockbuster for a very long time.