Top films at the box office

“Kung Fu Panda 3” received a strong “A” rating from first-night moviegoers on CinemaScore and got a good 80 percent approval rating from critics on Totten Tomatoes.

The threequel’s debut is third all time for the month of January and helped propel the overall box-office weekend to a 35% increase from previous year.

“The “Kung Fu Panda” franchise was a summer mainstay”, Dergarabedian said. The sequel kicked its way to a solid $41 million from 3,955 theaters.

Opening on the same day as the US, Kung Fu Panda 3 earned nearly US$16m more at the Chinese box office, with the total expected to increase during the 15-day Spring Festival, which begins on February 7. The film now has a total domestic gross of $139 million, a big thanks to that being the Oscar hype around it. With solid word-of-mouth and no direct competition on the horizon, Kung Fu Panda should have a healthy run ahead of it until Disney’s Zootopia arrives in early March.

Fox also grabbed second place at the box office this weekend with “The Revenant” starring Leonardo DiCaprio, which brought in $12.4 million in the US during its fourth weekend of wide release.

The sci-fi blockbuster, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, took third with $11-million. Pooling in $10 million on its seventh weekend, the movie has now grossed $1.98 billion worldwide.

Starring Chris Pine and Casey Affleck, it is based on the true story of a 1952 rescue of a ship that breaks apart during a raging New England nor’easter.

The film was met with mixed notices from the press but decent feedback from ticket buyers polled on CinemaScore.

Open Road Films’ Marlon Wayan’s spoof flick “Fifty Shades of Black” brought in $6.2 million in box office receipts, enough to make it the weekend’s No. 9 film. Instead, it seduced a limp $6.2 million worth of business from 2,075 screens. The CGI comedy – which carries a $145 million budget – is set in China with Po meeting his biological father and bonding with him before confronting an evil supernatural warrior.