MLK Weekend Box Office Report (January 14-17, 2022)
by Emily Nagle
Top 5 Highest Grossing Films for MLK Day Weekend 2022
5. The King’s Man ($2.6 million)
4. The 355 ($2.7 million)
3. Sing 2 ($10.3 million)
2. Spider-Man: No Way Home ($24.6 million)
1. Scream ($33.8 million)
For the first time in its 5 weeks in theaters, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” didn’t make the number-one spot for highest grossing films. It was dethroned by “Scream”, the fifth installment in the popular slasher film franchise. Also unofficially referred as “Scream 5” by fans, “Scream” serves as a sequel to “Scream 4” (2011), with many original cast members – including Neve Campbell as protagonist Sidney Prescott and Courteney Cox as journalist Gale Weathers – reprising their roles. Newcomers to the series include Jenna Ortega, Mason Gooding, and Jack Quaid. The first installment in the series since 2011, “Scream” is set 21 years after the events of the first movie, and a new killer is behind the mask targeting a group of Woodsboro teenagers. Some critics have called it the best “Scream” movie yet, praising it for maintaining the meta commentary on horror films that its predecessors had; Cass Clarke of CBR even wrote that “2022’s Scream would make the late Wes Craven incredibly proud.” “Scream” was directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, making it the first film in the series to not be directed by Wes Craven.
Although “Spider-Man: No Way Home” wasn’t at number one this weekend, it is continuing to rake in some serious money a month after its release. It made more than $20 million over the extended MLK Day weekend, making it the seventh-highest-grossing fifth weekend for a film, right behind “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” (which made $26.3 million during its fifth weekend in theaters).