Warner Bros. Pictures’ Magic Mike’s Last Dance topped the typically sluggish Super Bowl weekend (Feb. 12) with about $8.2 million in ticket sales across 1,500 North American screens ($18.6 million worldwide), according to the studio. The low tally was enough to hold off 20th Century Studios’ box office juggernaut Avatar: The Way of Water at $7 million in estimated revenue across 3,000 screens, and the re-release of 1997’s Titanic with $6.3 million in projected incremental revenue.
Starring Channing Tatum in his third turn as the male stripper of the title, Last Dance was originally earmarked as an HBO Max original movie. But that distribution strategy changed after David Zaslav become CEO of the new Warner Bros. Discovery media giant (formerly WarnerMedia) and instigated a return to legacy distribution channels, spearheaded by theatrical.
The movie’s big screen launch marks the second consecutive No. 1 box office debut for Tatum following last year’s The Lost City from Paramount Pictures.
Director James Cameron’s Avatar sequel The Way of Water slightly narrowed the box office gap (by $700,000) to his previous Titanic movie, which remains the No. 3 all-time box office release at $2.197 billion. The Way of Water stands at No. 4 all-time with $2.181 billion in ticket sales, according to Box Office Mojo.
Super Bowl-themed comedy 80 for Brady, which finds longtime best friends Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno and Sally Field traveling to the Big Game to see their idol Tom Brady, added $6 million in its second weekend of release to up its box office total near $25 million.
Finally, Universal Pictures/DreamWorks Animation’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and director M. Night Shyamalan’s psychological drama Knock at the Cabin each added $5.5 million in ticket sales. Boots has generated almost $394 million in global box office revenue after eight weekends, with Knock at the Cabin up to more than $23 million after two weekends.
