'Thor 3' Repeats While 'Daddy's Home 2' and 'Orient Express' Deliver Strong Debuts

Thor: Ragnarok delivered an expected #1 finish in its second weekend at the domestic box office, pushing the film's domestic total ahead of both the first and second Thor films after just ten days in release. However, just as much a story are the strong openings for a batch of newcomers, both wide and and limited, as Paramount's Daddy's Home 2 and Fox's Murder on the Orient Express both delivered ahead of expectations and Fox Searchlight's Three Billboards averaged $80,000 per theater over its limited bow. Meanwhile, A24's Lady Bird cracked the weekend top ten despite only playing in 37 theaters.

With an estimated $56.6 million this weekend, Thor: Ragnarok dropped just 54% in its second weekend, pushing the film's domestic gross over $211 million after ten days in release. That's enough to best the full domestic gross for both the first Thor film ($181m) and Thor: The Dark World ($206.3m). In fact, Ragnarok is now the 12th highest grossing film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and will soon top Doctor Strange's $232 million, which opened over the same weekend as Ragnarok last year.

In addition to its domestic performance, Ragnarok also added $76 million to its international total this weekend, pushing the film's overseas total to $438.5 million for a global cume that tops $650 million. This too bests the previous global cumes for the first two Thor films as well as placing it tenth among the 17 previous films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, soon to top the $677.7 million worldwide gross for Doctor Strange. The film is also already ranked in the top ten at the worldwide box office among 2017 releases.

Placing second is Paramount's Daddy's Home 2, which received a critical drubbing to the tune of a score of 30 on Metacritic, but that didn't deter opening weekend audiences. With an estimated $30 million, the comedy sequel brought in $8.7 million less than the first film, but given the first film debuted over the Christmas holiday and the sequel has the Thanksgiving holiday and all of December ahead of it this is a great start for the pic.

Even better, while critics weren't impressed, opening day audiences gave Daddy's Home 2 an "A-" CinemaScore, a notch better than the "B+" for the first film, which went on to gross over $150 million domestically. The sequel also drastically increased its female audience compared to the first film with 57% of the opening weekend audience being female vs. 48% for the first film. Of the overall audience, 65% were 25 years or older while 52% were 35+.

Pulling into third place is Fox's Murder on the Orient Express, delivering an estimated $28.2 million from 3,341 theaters. Orient Express played to an audience that was 56% female vs. 44% male and of the overall audience, 51% was 35 years of age or older. The film received a "B" CinemaScore.

Looking ahead, based on a couple of the comparisons made in Mojo's weekend preview, The Girl on the Train opened with $24.5 million and went on to gross over $75 million domestically. Additionally, Arrival also opened with $24 million and went on to gross just over $100 million, which will make the coming weekends very interesting as Orient Express plays throughout the holiday season.

Internationally, after a strong start in the UK last weekend, Murder on the Orient Express expanded into 57 total markets this weekend where it grossed an estimated $45.7 million, pushing its overseas cume to $57.2 million. Among this weekend's new openers, China led the way with an estimated $19 million (4.5x bigger than The Great Gatsby), Russia brought in an estimated $5.7 million followed by Australia ($3m) and Mexico ($1.2m). Overall, Fox reports Orient Express is outpacing The Great Gatsby (+60%) and Gone Girl (+109%) in the same bucket of markets at current exchange rates.

Placing fourth is STX's A Bad Moms Christmas, which is already holding strong, dropping just 31% in its second weekend and delivering an estimated $11.5 million. This is the strongest hold of any wide release 2017 comedy as the film's domestic cume is now just shy of $40 million.

Rounding out the top five is Lionsgate's Jigsaw with an estimated $3.4 million, pushing the film's cume to $34.3 million. The film added an additional $8.6 million internationally this weekend from 73 markets where its overseas cume now totals $44.7 million for a global cume just shy of $80 million.

Other big news in the top ten is found in tenth position where A24's Lady Bird delivered an incredible $1.25 million from just 37 theaters for an impressive $33,766 per theater average. A24 is reporting sell outs in many markets this weekend as the Greta Gerwig-directed feature will expand into top markets again this coming weekend leading into a nationwide break over Thanksgiving.

In limited release, Fox Searchlight's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri debuted in just four locations in New York and Los Angeles with an estimated $320,000 for an $80,000 per theater average. This is a great start for the pic, which holds a score of 86 on Metacritic and won the People's Choice Award at this year's Toronto International Film Festival. Looking ahead, Three Billboards expands to 12 more cities next weekend, with a wider break scheduled for Wednesday November 22 where it should reach ~425 theaters.

Additionally, Atlas's No Greater Love brought in an estimated $21,821 from 22 locations ($992 PTA); The Orchard's Thelma opened in one theater with $12,357; and Cohen Media's re-release of Shakespeare Wallah generated an estimated $3,577, also from one theater.

Among international highlights, Disney and Pixar's Coco became the highest grossing animated release in Mexico all-time and the overall second highest grossing release ever in the market as its cume topped $41 million after 17 days in release. The film will begin hitting theaters in North America on November 22 followed by releases across the globe from Russia on November 23 all the way to its final release in Japan on March 16, 2018. The performances for both Coco and Thor: Ragnarok helped push Disney over the $3 billion mark for 2017, becoming the only studio to hit that mark each of the last three years.

Next weekend will be another big one as Warner Bros. releases Justice League into over 4,000 theaters while Sony releases the animated feature The Star and Lionsgate releases Wonder, both into ~3,000 locations.

You can check out all of this weekend's estimated results right here and we'll be updating our charts with weekend actuals on Monday afternoon.

Discuss this story with fellow Box Office Mojo fans on Facebook. On Twitter, follow us at @boxofficemojo.