Keke Palmers buddy comedy One of Them Days comes out on top at weekend box office

WASHINGTON — The Keke Palmer buddy comedy “One of Them Days” opened in first place on the North American box office charts on a particularly slow Martin Luther King Jr.holiday weekend.The R-rated Sony release earned $11.6 million from 2,675 theaters, according to studio estimates Sunday, beating Disney’s “Mufasa: The Lion King” by a hair.

By the end of Monday’s holiday, “Mufasa” will have the edge, however.“One of Them Days” cost only $14 million to produce, which it is expected to earn by Monday.The very well-reviewed buddy comedy stars Palmer and SZA as friends and roommates scrambling to get money for rent before their landlord evicts them.Notably it’s the first Black female-led theatrical comedy since “Girls Trip” came out in 2017 and it currently carries a stellar 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.But the marketplace was also quite weak overall.

The total box office for Friday, Saturday and Sunday will add up to less than $80 million, according to data from Comscore, making it one of the worst Martin Luther King Jr.holiday weekends since 1997.“For an individual film like ‘One of Them Days’ this was a great weekend,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore.

“You can still find success stories within what is overall a low grossing weekend for movie theaters.”The Walt Disney Co.’s “Mufasa” was close by in second place with $11.5 million from the weekend, its fifth playing in theaters.Globally, the Barry Jenkins-directed prequel has made $588 million.It even beat a brand-new offering, the Blumhouse horror “Wolf Man,” which debuted in third place with $10.6 million from 3,354 North American theaters.Writer-director Leigh Whannell’s monster tale starring Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner did not enter theaters with great reviews.

It currently carries a 53% on Rotten Tomatoes.Reviews don’t generally affect the success of horror movies in their first weekend, but audiences also gave it...