The Gerard Butler action flick Angel Has Fallen jumped right to the top of the box office this weekend with a strong $21 million debut. Another stunner of the weekend is the debut of a Christian film, Overcomer, in third place.
Lionsgate’s Angel Has Fallen serves as star Gerard Butler’s third time at bat as Secret Service agent Mike Banning who is once again in the thick of it as yet another plot to kill the president calls for his unique talents to survive in the midst of the mayhem. This time, agent Banning is accused of trying to kill the president (Morgan Freeman) and must race to clear his name before the bad guys prevail.
Angel hit the ground running pulling in $21.25 since its Friday debut. The earning puts this third episode of the Fallen series in line with the $21.6 million earned by 2016’s London Has Fallen, though quite a bit shy of the series’s first film, Olympus Has Fallen, which earned $30.4 million.
The studio says it purposefully waited until all the big summer movies were already launched before putting its third in the Fallen series into theaters, and the late August release seems to have worked, at least for its debut weekend.
Pushed down to second place from its own successful debut last weekend is Universal’s Good Boys, a coming-of-age comedy that surprised everyone with its huge $20 million debut. Produced by Seth Rogen, whose Superbad was also a raunchy coming-of-age hit, Good Boys now ranks as Universal’s first number one R-rated comedy since 2016’s The Boss.
With a great contrast in styles and content to the number two movie, Sony and AFFIRM studio’s Overcomer hit at number three this weekend. Christian-themed movies continue to surprise Hollywood and this weekend is no exception with the debut of Overcomer, which racked up a strong $8.2 million in ticket sales, giving the film the third biggest opening for a religious film, Box Office Mojo reported.
Overcomer is a sports-based movie with Christian themes directed by the Kendrick Brothers. Not only did the film do well at the box office, it also earned a rare A+ CinemaScore. At a production cost of only $5 million, Overcomer has already cleared the bar for production with its first weekend in theaters.
Disney’s Lion King once again roars into the top five and figured in at number four with an additional $8.2 million in sales. Lion King has now earned more than $510 million at the domestic box office.
Finally, rounding out the top five, Universal’s Hobbs & Shaw continued doing bangup business bringing in another $8.1 million at the box office. That brings the film’s domestic total to nearly $147 million. But adding luster to its record, the film starring Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham also opened wide in China this weekend and pulled in a cool $102 million there. The smash debut in China sent Hobbs & Shaw soaring past $588 million worldwide to date.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.
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