Australian Box Office Report: Thor: Ragnarok smashes its way to the top

Hooray for Kiwi director Taika Waititi and his leadership in taking the Marvel franchise (at least, just this part of it) into a fresh and fun direction! Leading and supporting cast worked their superhero muscles off to take Thor: Ragnarok straight to no. 1 at the box office in its opening weekend.  It made a mind-boggling $10.13m, which makes up for the relatively low box office performance of late.  The only film that generated a better result this year was Beauty And The Beast, which opened with $13.16m in March.  In comparison, the previous Thor film, Thor: The Dark World, opened in 2013 and made $7.2m.  If you haven’t seen it yet, go see Thor: The Dark World – we gave it a rave review.

Though Thor performed phenomenally strong, it cannibalised the rest of the box office, with only one film breaking the 500k mark. Blade Runner 2049 remains steady at no. 2 this week at the box office.  It made $557k, and has now made a little over $11.5m since its release 4 weeks ago.  It has hovered in the top 2, and remains on 264 screens nationwide.

Naturally, heaven and earth moved to accommodate for Thor: Ragnarok, which meant that last week’s no. 1 film, Geostorm, fell to no. 3 this week.  It made $497k this week, and will probably fall further down the box office ladder fast – it did not get good reviews. 

Last week’s no. 3 film, The Mountain Between Us, drops to no. 4  this week, making $447k.   It also earned a screen average of $1,553. The new Matt Damon and Julianne Moore comedy – Suburbicon – opened at no. 5 this week, and made $372k.

This weekend, the new film from the Saw franchise, Jigsaw, opens in cinemas, surely to bring more horror to a very horror-filled box office year to date.  On the flipside, Mila Kunis returns to the screens with comedy Bad Moms 2, an early Christmas themed film! Don’t expect either to topple Thor, however.

All figures from The Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia and Box Office Mojo.

———-

This content has recently been ported from its original home on The Iris and may have formatting errors – images may not be showing up, or duplicated, and galleries may not be working. We are slowly fixing these issue. If you spot any major malfunctions making it impossible to read the content, however, please let us know at editor AT theaureview.com.