LOS ANGELES — Johnny Depp is back on top of the box office. “Ebenezer,” Ti West’s take on “A Christmas Carol,” led North America on Friday with $6.7 million from 3,535 theaters, including $1.5 million from Thursday previews, Variety.
The opening puts the Paramount film on course for $18 million to $20 million over the weekend. Variety projected about another $20 million overseas.
Paramount still expects $20 million, the studio said. Other studios think it will land lower — Deadline reported that Saturday morning.
A $20 million start would land right where Depp’s older stand-alone films did. “Black Mass” opened to $22.6 million in 2015. “Public Enemies” took $25.2 million in its first weekend in 2009.
The movie cost around $38 million to produce, according to Variety — and it’s rated PG-13. Exit polls gave it an A-minus CinemaScore.
Big-screen formats did a lot of the work: 36% of the money came from premium large-format screens, Deadline said. Business was spread out pretty evenly from coast to coast. Now the hope is that families show up in force on Saturday.
The weekend’s other wide opener started slowly. Amazon MGM’s “How to Rob a Bank,” with Nicholas Hoult, Zoë Kravitz and Pete Davidson, took $2.2 million on Friday and is pacing toward about $4.75 million against a budget of more than $40 million, Variety reported.
Among holdovers, “The Cat in the Hat” is headed for about $10 million in its second weekend. “Godzilla Minus Zero,” last weekend’s No. 1, is expected to reach about $48.1 million domestically by Sunday.