Overall ticket sales were down nearly 50% from last weekend, with the holdover champion “Demon Slayer” edging out the newcomer “Him” for first place, according to studio estimates Sunday. Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures’ “Demon Slayer” added $17.3 million over the weekend, bringing its total to $104.7 million, which makes it the highest grossing anime film ever in North America.
The football horror “Him” opened in second place with an estimated $13.5 million in ticket sales. Universal Pictures opened “Him” in 3,168 North American theaters, where the audience was 52% male and 65% over the age of 25. Internationally, it earned $400,000.
Produced by Peele’s Monkeypaw and directed by Justin Tipping, “Him” is about a promising young quarterback (Tyriq Withers) who is invited to train with a veteran (Marlon Wayans) at an isolated compound.
“Him” scored with neither critics (it carries a 29% on Rotten Tomatoes) nor audiences, who gave the film a C- CinemaScore. In his review for The Associated Press, film writer Jake Coyle wrote that the film “was made with the potent premise of bringing the kind of dark, satirical perspective that characterizes a Monkeypaw production to our violent national pastime. But that promise gets fumbled in an allegorical chamber play that grows increasingly tedious.”
