David Harbour's bad Santa couldn't top Black Panther 2 at the box office

Jessica Wang
·2 min read

A combatant Santa Claus couldn't dethrone Queen Ramonda and the Wakandians' rule at the box office.

The Black Panther sequel retained its No. 1 spot atop the domestic and global box office for a fourth week in a row. Wakanda Forever earned an extra $17.5 million across North American theaters this weekend, pulling in $393.7 million overall since its Nov. 11 theatrical debut. Worldwide, it has grossed an estimated $733 million.

Violent Night, a holiday action comedy that stars David Harbour as a gritty St. Nick who rescues a wealthy family held hostage by mercenaries on Christmas Eve, followed in second place with a jolly good $13.3 million debut. The film also stars John Leguizamo and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation alum Beverly D'Angelo.

Violent Night David Harbour
Violent Night David Harbour

Allen Fraser/Universal Pictures David Harbour in 'Violent Night'

Harbour told EW he wanted to do as much as the on-screen fight scenes as possible, which involved a "tremendous amount" of training. "I got real big for it and then I was also doing jiu-jitsu for months beforehand training for it," he said. "I wanted to do as much as possible, and so I actually did a tremendous amount of training."

"I got a jolly old belly, but also, I got some shoulders and some other things that you don't see in the classic Coca-Cola Santa drawings," the Stranger Things star added. "It was very weird. My movement was somewhat restricted because I had these big old love handles. I was with these [stunt] guys up in Winnipeg, and we would just go do crazy workouts, and then go eat poutine or whatever, out in the middle of Canada. So we were sort of like big old walruses."

The star-studded animation Strange World, which features voice work from Jaboukie Young-White, Lucy Liu, Jake Gyllenhaal, Gabrielle Union, and Dennis Quaid, followed behind Harbour's bad Santa at No. 3. It earned an additional $4.9 million during its second week at the box office, which brings the total to $25.5 million overall. Elsewhere, the horror food satire The Menu and war film Devotion once again rounded out the top five with an extra $3.5 million and $2.8 million, respectively.

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