Box Office Breakdown: Superb 'Split' Performance Shows M. Night Shyamalan's Not Dead After All

Who knew M. Night Shyamalan had at least one more interesting twist in him?  His new dissociative identity thriller, Split, tore through box office expectations and racked up an impressive $40 million this weekend.  That makes it Shyamalan's fourth highest opening weekend ever, and his highest since The Last Airbender.  That may not sound too impressive, since that movie is famously (infamously?) terrible, but keep in mind that adaptation cost about 15 times Split's reported $10 million budget.  

Pulling in four times your production budget in your opening weekend would be impressive for anyone, but for Shyamalan, accomplishing that feat right after his mildly successful found-footage horror film The Visit has the makings of a comeback.  And with a certified fresh rating of 76% on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing, it's not just a box-office comeback.  While the reviews aren't exactly glowing (and the premise still feels a little hacky, even if done in an interesting way), they are good enough to suggest that this may be the interesting second act the director needed at this point in his career.  The Happening, The Last Airbender, and Lady in the Water are all-time terrible movies, but nobody would be happier than me to see Shyamalan return to his smaller dramatic genre roots and start knocking them out of the park again.  I'm not quite ready for him to take on that Unbreakable sequel he keeps talking about, but I'm ready to give him another chance.

The other big new release this weekend, xXx: Return of Xandar Cage (I keep wanting to add a "the" in there), feels even more unnecessary than the 2005 Diesel-less sequel, Ice Cube's xXx: State of the Union.  I'll never understand how Diesel convinced people to fork over $85 million to make a sequel that no one wanted, in a series that everyone forgot existed, especially since he hasn't been a draw for an action movie without the words "furious" or "fast" in the title since, well, since the first xXx movie.  From what I hear, this was a partnership with foreign investors, namely Chinese companies, which makes a certain amount of sense given the $50 million taken in overseas so far.  Diesel has an interesting brand of fan-driven weirdness about him, though, that I find hard to root against.  So, if this is just successful enough to allow him to make some weird fantasy epic from some guy he met at his weekly D&D get-togethers, then more power to him.

A few other notes:

• Rogue One crosses a $1 billion worldwide and $500 million domestic making it Disney's fourth billion dollar movie of the year, and the biggest domestic grossing film of the year.  In other news, money will now be printed with Mickey Mouse's face at Disney World, because that'll just be easier.
• Hidden Figures and La La Land are shaping up to be the big critical-darling box office hits of the season, whereas Scorcese's Silence is looking more and more like a marketing misfire as it hemorrhages moviegoers from its already anemic attendance.
• McDonald's biopic, The Founder, rides mediocre reviews to mediocre returns, just missing the top ten.  Keaton's awards hopes are all but dashed, but I imagine this one was always destined to do better on streaming and on demand services anyway.  
• After a relatively slow start, Sing is yet another example of the unbelievably long legs of children's animated films.  When kids get a hold of something with their weirdly strong oddly peanut-butter smelling fingers, they don't let go until it has all of the money.  Needless to say, expect a sequel.

Check out the full three-day estimated top ten:*

1. Split - $40 million
2. xXx: Return of Xandar Cage - $20.1 million
3. Hidden Figures - $15.7 million
4. Sing - $9 million
5. La La Land - $8.4 million
6. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - $7.2 million
7. Monster Trucks - $7 million
8. Patriots Day - $5.7 million
9. Sleepless - $3.5 million
10. The Bye Bye Man - $3.4 million

Wide-releases coming next week: Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, A Dog's Purpose, Gold (expansion).

*Box office stats courtesy of boxofficemojo.com.