MGM’s boxing drama Creed III scored an opening-round knockout this weekend, taking in an estimated $58.7 million to top North America’s box office in one of the biggest debuts ever for a sports film.
That made first-time director Michael B. Jordan – who again plays rock-hard boxer Apollo Creed – the “undefeated box office champion,” said industry analyst Exhibitor Relations.
In this ninth film in the Rocky franchise – the first without Sylvester Stallone in the Rocky Balboa role he created – Creed comes out of retirement for a dramatic showdown against an old friend played by Jonathan Majors.
That makes this a pretty good weekend for Majors, the villain in Marvel and Disney’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which placed second for the Friday-through-Sunday period at $12.5 million. Paul Rudd stars as the title ant; Evangeline Lilly is the Wasp.
In third place was Universal’s Cocaine Bear at $11 million. The horror comedy is based loosely on the true story of a black bear that wreaks havoc in the Tennessee woods after consuming a cache of lost cocaine. Keri Russell plays one of the locals caught up in the crazy.
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – To the Swordsmith Village, an anime sequel from Crunchyroll, placed fourth at $10.1 million. The previous Demon Slayer film in 2021 had a record debut for a non-English language feature, taking in $19.5 million, Variety reported.
And in fifth was Lionsgate’s Christian drama Jesus Revolution, a story of a 1960s religious movement in California. It took in $8.7 million.
