Box Office Battle: ‘Scream VI’ wins weekend with series-best $44.5M debut

"Box Office Battle" is The Fly’s weekly roundup of what movies topped the weekend’s box office.

Paramount’s (PARA) “Scream VI” won Oscar weekend at the domestic box office with a franchise-best opening of $44.5M. The movie received a B+ CinemaScore. Overseas, “Scream VI” also opened to a series-best $22.6M from 53 markets for a worldwide total of $67.1M.

BOX OFFICE RUNNER-UPS: MGM (AMZN) and Michael B. Jordan’s “Creed III” fell to number 2 with $27.2M from 4,007 theaters. Behind it was Sony’s (SONY) “65” with a $12.3M debut. Disney’s (DIS) “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantomania” placed number 4 with an estimated $7M for a domestic total of $198M. Rounding out the top five, Comcast (CMCSA) subsidiary Universal’s “Cocaine Bear” grossed another $6.2M in its third weekend for a domestic cume of $51.7M and $65.7M globally.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE:

1. “Scream VI” – $44.5M
2. “Creed III” – $27.2M
3. “65” – $12.3M
4. “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantomania” – $7M
5. “Cocaine Bear” – $6.2M

Other publicly traded companies in filmmaking include Warner Bros. (WBD) and Lionsgate (LGF.A).