'Alita: Battle Angel' Tops The Box Office During The Worst President's Day Weekend In 15 Years

Last year, President's Day weekend was quite the box office bonanza thanks to Black Panther raking in $202 million in its opening days. This year, the holiday weekend wasn't fortunate enough to have such an impressive performer, and it resulted in the worst three-day President's Day weekend since 2004.

Alita: Battle Angel landed at the top of the box office with $27.8 million. Even though that doesn't seem like an impressive number for a movie that cost $170 million to make, the film still performed beyond analyst expectations. But not all of the new releases were so lucky.Deadline reports that Alita: Battle Angel needs to make somewhere between $500-$550 million in order to break even. With an opening weekend of $27.8 million in the United States and an international take that currently stands at $94.3 million, things aren't looking so good for the 20th Century Fox release. That's a shame since Alita turned out to be quite the satisfying and cool sci-fi action adventure, and I would have liked to see the blatant set-up for a sequel pay off someday.

Shifting into second place after last weekend's box office victory was The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part. The film dropped only 37.8% this weekend with a $21.2 million take. That's not bad for a sequel that has received somewhat lukewarm reviews (even though it deserves more praise). The film should have decent legs heading into March, even though there's some stiff competition around the corner.

Warner Bros. Pictures also came away with the #3 spot thanks to the debut of Isn't It Romantic? The meta romantic comedy from director Todd Strauss-Schulson (read our interview with him), earned $14.2 million this weekend, but it also got a bit of an early start on Wednesday in order to take full advantage of Valentine's Day.

Landing in fourth place was the R-rated comedy What Men Want, which also enjoyed a small drop of 40%. The film pulled in $10.9 million, bringing the total domestic count to just under $38 million. That's not bad for a lower key R-rated comedy, especially one with reviews that have been mostly unfavorable.

Finally, the top five rounded out with the debut of Happy Death Day 2U, making $9.8 million over the weekend. The horror sequel also opened on Wednesday, and was expected to bring in over $20 million in its first six days (including the President's Day holiday). But it looks like it will underperform with somewhere around $15 million. Even so, the film only cost $9 million to make, so it'll almost certainly be profitable for Universal

On top of the somewhat disappointing numbers for these movies individually, The Hollywood Reporter notes that the winter 2019 box office revenue is the lowest in eight years. Perhaps it's suffering due to a lack of a new Star Wars this year? Hopefully, the arrival of How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World and Captain Marvel will help boost it a bit.

For the rest of the box office chart, which includes Glass surpassing $100 million domestically, head to Box Office Mojo.