‘Split’ Leads US Box Office in 2017

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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The people's emotions in the cinema at the movies
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A movie about an insane, deadly man who kidnaps three teenagers leads the 2017 box office with domestic receipts of $128 million. It benefits from having been released weeks before other films in the race.

The success of “Split,” which was released January 10,  is improbable. Its major character, Kevin Wendell Crumb , has 23 personalities, which is several more than a 117 minute movie likely needs. The film’s star, James McAvoy, has done generally good work. However, he is not the kind of draw that Tom Cruise or Denzel Washington are.

The movie’s director is famous, and has made several highly successful films. M. Night Shyamalan has also directed “The Sixth Sense,” “Unbreakable” and “Signs.” The first two movies starred major box office star Bruce Willis. “Signs” stared Mel Gibson, before he became a Hollywood pariah. (Although he seems to have staged a comeback in the last year)

“Split”‘s production and distribution home is Universal Pictures, part of the NBCUniversal division of cable giant Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA). The studio also has the third best performing movie of the year, the semi-pornographic “50 Shades Darker” which has brought in $99 million in domestic box office. It was released on February 10

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The movie likely to take the number one spot soon is “The LEGO Batman Movie,” an illustrated story based on a successful toy franchise married with a successful super hero one. It has taken in $118 million in domestic box office. It had a February 10 release date.

Since the most successful movies each year usually bring in over $500 million, none of the top movies so far this year is likely to take the top spot of 2017. The means the eventual No.1 has, obviously, not even hit theaters.

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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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