Paramount Pictures and Legendary’s video game adaptation “Street Fighter” claimed the top spot at the domestic box office this weekend, pulling in an estimated $31 million across North American theaters, trade outlets reported Saturday.
The martial arts action film, directed by Kitao Sakurai and featuring Noah Centineo alongside Andrew Koji, earned $13 million on Friday from 3,575 locations, according to studio figures cited by The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. Although the haul secured the weekend crown, it arrived slightly beneath studio expectations, which had projected an opening in the mid-$30 million range for the $82 million production.
Moviegoers awarded “Street Fighter” a B- grade through market research firm CinemaScore, TheWrap reported, matching the mark earned by the original 1994 live-action film. Reviewers were less enthusiastic, leaving the feature with a 41 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, where critic Frank Scheck characterized the production as a “jumbled tonal mess” that proved “only sporadically entertaining,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Documentary Delivers Historic Opening
While “Street Fighter” took first place on total receipts, A24’s documentary “You Can See Everything” delivered the weekend’s biggest commercial surprise. Directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, the film chronicles the weeks preceding former Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes beginning her federal prison term for investor fraud.
Playing in only 855 theaters, the documentary grossed $5.5 million on Friday and is projected to finish the weekend with between $12 million and $12.5 million, according to industry estimates reported by Variety and TheWrap. The release surpassed February’s Amazon MGM documentary “Melania,” which opened to roughly $7.1 million, setting the benchmark for the largest opening frame for a non-music documentary since Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” in 2004, TheWrap noted.
Audiences and film reviewers showered the project with praise, driving Rotten Tomatoes scores to near-perfect marks and prompting roughly 1,300 sold-out screenings nationwide, according to figures shared by A24. Exit polling indicated substantial interest from younger ticket buyers, with three out of every four patrons in key markets like New York and Los Angeles under 35 years old, The Hollywood Reporter reported.
Mixed Fortunes for New Wide Releases
Other fresh releases faced a more difficult landscape. The 20th Century Studios survival thriller “Whalefall,” which follows a stranded diver played by Austin Abrams inside a sperm whale, took fourth place with a disappointing $7 million projected opening from more than 3,000 screens. The result fell well short of the studio’s $11 million projection, according to The Hollywood Reporter, leaving the $60 million production facing an uphill road to profitability.
Focus Features debuted a new adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility,” directed by Georgia Oakley and starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles. The costume drama collected $3.2 million to $3.3 million on Friday and is pacing toward a $6.7 million weekend from 2,545 theaters, drawing an A- CinemaScore from viewers.
Universal Pictures’ horror title “Other Mommy” rounded out the top tier in its second week, tumbling 72 percent to approximately $7.8 million, according to box office tracking. Despite the steep decline following poor audience polling, the Jessica Chastain-led horror film has generated roughly $44 million domestically against a modest $19 million budget.
Box office competition is expected to shift next weekend as studios roll out a wide slate of new releases, including the animated project “Wildwood” and the comic book adaptation “Clayface.”
