'Curse of La Llorona' is No. 1 as Box Office braces for more 'Avengers'

Gabe Cohn

April 22, 2019 12:13 AM

With “Avengers: Endgame” positioned to wipe out any competitors come Friday, only a couple of studios dared to roll out new movies this weekend.

'Curse of La Llorona' is No 1 as Box Office braces for more 'Avengers'

It worked fairly well for both of them.

Warner Bros.’ “The Curse of La Llorona,” the latest horror movie from some of the producers of the popular “Conjuring” series, topped the domestic box office with $26.5 million in ticket sales. That’s a solid start; the movie reportedly cost just $9 million to make. While it pales in comparison to the $53.5 million that “The Nun,” a recent “Conjuring” offshoot, made during its opening weekend in September, it is above the roughly $21 million opening weekend that analysts expected for “La Llorona.”

Directed by Michael Chaves, “La Llorona” stars Linda Cardellini as Anna, a widow. The plot involves Anna and her two children, Chris (Roman Christou) and Sam (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen), being haunted by La Llorona (Marisol Ramirez), a weeping woman based on a figure associated with Mexican folklore. In her review for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis called the movie “an enjoyably old-fashioned ghost story.”

Warner Bros. also took the No. 2 spot with its lighthearted superhero movie “Shazam!,” which brought in $17.3 million during its third weekend. Its domestic gross is now $121.3 million.

The other new movie this weekend was Fox’s faith-based “Breakthrough,” which landed in third place with $11.1 million. Based on a 2015 incident in which a Missouri teenager survived after being submerged for 15 minutes in a frozen lake, the movie stars Chrissy Metz as a mother who prays for her son (Marcel Ruiz) to make a seemingly impossible medical recovery.

Disney’s “Captain Marvel,” in its seventh week, rose from sixth place last week to fourth, earning another $9.1 million this weekend. The movie, which was the debut of Brie Larson’s superhero, now has a cumulative domestic total of $400 million — just in time for Larson to outpace herself as part of the “Avengers” ensemble this week.

Gabe Cohn