LOS ANGELES: Fifty Shades Freed is dominating North American moviegoing this weekend with a solid US$38.8 million at 3,678 locations.
Family comedy Peter Rabbit wound up with a better-than-expected US$25 million at 3,725 sites.
Clint Eastwood's thriller The 15:17 to Paris from Warner Bros. arrived above forecasts at US$12.6 million at 3,042 venues for the weekend.
A pair of sturdy holiday season holdovers in their eighth weekends took fourth and fifth as Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle finished with about US$9.8 million at 3,126 sites; and The Greatest Showman grossed US$6.4 million at 2,373 screens. Jumanji declined only 10 per cent from the previous weekend and will finish this weekend with US$365.7 million in 54 days.
The finale of the Fifty Shades trilogy is also launching in 57 international markets this weekend with about US$100 million, which brings the franchise total to about US$1.09 billion.
Moviegoing will receive another major boost over the Presidents Day weekend with Disney-Marvel's Black Panther opening Feb. 16 and forecasted to take in as much as US$150 million during the Friday-Monday period.
Fifty Shades Freed sees Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson return as Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele in the conclusion of the events set in motion in 2015's Fifty Shades of Grey and 2017's Fifty Shades Darker. Though the Fifty Shades Freed launch wound up above forecasts, it was not as strong as its predecessors. Fifty Shades of Grey opened with a sensational US$85.2 million in 2015, and Fifty Shades Darker opened with US$46.6 million on the same weekend last year.
In its third weekend out, The Maze Runner: The Death Cure finished sixth behind Jumanji and Showman with US$6 million at 2,923 sites. The finale of the dystopian trilogy has taken in US$49 million in 17 days.
The second weekend of Helen Mirren's historical horror film Winchester followed in seventh with US$5.1 million at 2,480 locations. The eighth weekend of Steven Spielberg's The Post finished eighth with US$3.5 million at 1,865 venues to lift its domestic total to US$72.8 million. -- Reuters