Box Office: Star Wars outdone by Jumanji on Boxing Day weekend

Rock beats paper and now The Rock beats Star Wars after Jumanji: The Next Level has dethroned Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker one week after having the seventh-best opening weekend in Australian box office history.

Despite a very strong second week total of $8.32m it was always going to be a challenge for Star Wars to hold off the slate of Boxing Day releases. Especially with Jumanji making $13.26m which itself wasn't far off entering the top 10 all-time for an opening weekend at the Australian box office with the tenth spot held by Avengers: Age of Ultron with $15.70m.

The other two big Boxing Day releases closed out the top five with Cats ($1.63m) and JoJo Rabbit ($1.49m) both comfortably passing the $1m mark in their first week of release. 

The films to give way to the three new entries where lead by Knives Out which still made over $1m this week bring its five-week total to $10.80m. The other two films to drop out of the top five were The Addams Family which made $4.79m over four weeks and Playing with Fire which made $2.79m after three weeks of release.

Thanks to the major Boxing Day releases the Australian box office saw a boost of 23% on last weekend's large Star Wars inflated total making a total of $30.98m. This Boxing Day weekend also outperformed last year's equivalent which made $28.40m.

#1 Jumanji: The Next Level $13.26m

The sequel has easily outdone its predecessor Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle which made $9.22m on its opening weekend, it also topped last year's #1 Boxing Day film Aquaman which made $11.26m. The film started its run in theatres on 647 screens making an average of $20,506.

#2 Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker $8.32m

After the seventh-best opening week in Australian box office history with $22.57m, the film's overall total now sits at $30.90m with $52.95m needed to overtake Jurrasic World for a place in the all-time Australian top 10. For the second week in a row, the film was shown on 1,056 screens, although with a smaller average of $7,888.

#3 Frozen 2 $2.47m

Thanks to the holiday rush the film has enjoyed only a 12% decline on last weekend's total as it continues its chase of the $41m threshold needed to overtake Toy Story 4 as the top-grossing animated film of 2019 with its total currently at $31.28m. This Boxing Day weekend it was shown on 381 screens for an average of $6,493.

#4 Cats $1.63m

Following what seemed to be a chorus of criticism and an IMDB rating of 2.7 the film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's  Broadway classic directed by academy award winner Tom Hooper still managed to crack the $1m mark albeit at #4. The film's first week of release saw it shown on 337 screens for an average of $4,860.

#5 JoJo Rabbit $1.49m

The film written and directed by Taika Waititi, based on Christine Leunens's book Caging Skies, had the second-best average per screen this weekend with $11,571 on 129 screens as it outperformed its big-budget competitors.