Here's a twist: M. Night Shyamalan is king of the box office again
It's been 13 years and seven directing gigs since an M. Night Shyamalan movie opened at the top of the box office. Split broke that drought over the weekend.
While Sunday box office numbers are admittedly estimates, there is zero chance for #2 finisher xXx: The Return of Xander Cage. The Vin Diesel-led action movie nabbed an estimated $20 million domestically -- it's not a bad showing, but it's far behind the $40.2 million domestic estimate for Split.
While Split marks a milestone for Shyamalan, its opening numbers still don't top The Village. The 2004 thriller was the director's second-most successful domestic opening ($50.7 million) after Signs ($60.1 million), in 2002.
The current estimate for Split puts it #4 among Shyamalan openings, just a hair behind his 2010 film The Last Airbender, which opened at $40.3 million. The two are close enough that it's entirely possible we'll see Split in the #3 spot among Shyamalan movies once the final numbers are tallied.
The good news for Split is also great for a filmmaker who's spent much of the past decade in the critical doghouse. Shyamalan's RottenTomatoes average for the films released in the decade after The Village -- a group that includes Airbender, plus Lady in the Water, The Happening, and After Earth -- amounts to just 15 percent (and that's rounding up from 14.75).
Shyamalan's 2015 film The Visit fared far better critically -- 64 percent on RottenTomatoes -- and marked the director's first collaboration with the horror/thriller pros at Blumhouse Productions. Split is the second release from that creative pairing, and it's already clocked a 76 percent fresh rating on RottenTomatoes. It is, by many accounts, a very good movie.
In other words: Shyamalan is back and he seems to have found the perfect producing partner in Blumhouse.
The news isn't as great for xXx, whose $20 million opening is less than half of what the series kicked off with in 2002 ($44.5 million). It's not a total disaster, however; Diesel's return to the series helped to drive an opening weekend that nearly doubled the fortunes of 2005's sequel, XXX: State of the Union, which opened at $12.7 million.
The only other big box office stories for this third full weekend of 2017 come from the Disney camp. It was a victory on two fronts, with Moana crossing the $500 million mark at the worldwide box office and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story climbing past $1 billion.
Moana is the fourth consecutive feature from Walt Disney Animation Studios to reach that milestone, following Frozen, Big Hero 6, and Zootopia. The sub-studio that once lived in the shadow of Pixar, which Disney acquired in 2006, has definitely found a voice and approach of its own.
The Rogue One news isn't as notable, if only because Star Wars is a long-proven franchise that has been on a critical and commercial upswing since Disney's 2012 Lucasfilm acquisition. The surprise would come if the movie somehow didn't cross the billion dollar mark.
But it did, and it happened 39 days after the Star Wars spin-off's Dec. 16 release. Disney notes that the film's top foreign markets are the U.K., China, and Germany.
Rogue One finished 2016 as the #1 domestic release of the year -- a remarkable feat, given it did so in slightly more than two weeks. The film is also the #4 global release of 2016 and the #7 domestic release of all time.
Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
