By Love it or hate it (and our editor certainly didn’t like it), Mean Girls was able to dominate the weekend box office for MLK Jr. weekend. Bringing in $28 million domestically with another $4 predicted for the holiday, this is a pretty solid debut for the $36 million budgeted remake. Internationally, the film did okay, but $6.5 million from only 16 territories makes the number feel better.
Variety has a better breakdown of the demographics that went to see Mean Girls, but would you be shocked if I told you that moviegoers were overwhelmingly female? 76%, in fact, with that further breaking down to 60% under the age of 25. For as much of a nostalgic draw as this film is for millennials, it seems that Gen Z and Alpha were also interested.
Elsewhere in the top 10, newcomer The Beekeeper grabbed a comfortable second place with $16.7 million. Wonka finally slid a little to third and managed to take only half of Beekeeper’s haul with $8.3 million, though the film is now over a month old. Anyone But You came in fourth, actually climbing from last week, with $6.9 million.
Rounding out the top five was Migration, that weird comedy about migratory birds that has somehow become profitable. It added $6.1 million to its total, which is better than Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. That only scored $5.2 million and is unlikely to ever break even, let alone earn revenue.
Here are the top 10 films for the weekend of January 12-14, 2024. All totals listed are domestic:
- Mean Girls – $28 million
- The Beekeeper – $16.7 million
- Wonka – $8.3 million
- Anyone But You – $6.9 million
- Migration – $6.1 million
- Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom – $5.2 million
- Night Swim – $4.6 million
- Guntur Kaaram – $4.1 million
- The Boys in the Boat – $3.5 million
- The Book of Clarence – $2.5 million
