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It’s being called an unlikely battle of sequels.

Thor: The Dark World and The Best Man Holiday went head-to-head for the top spot at box office. Universal’s Best Man sequel had the strongest start on Friday, but finished the weekend $7.9 million behind Disney’s action-thriller.

The Best Man Holiday, which earned a whopping 30.6 million, soared 50 percent above industry forecasts. According to the Hollywood Reproter, the Malcolm D. Lee-directed project “opened notably higher than expected after receiving an A+ CinemaScore in every category. The film, expected to debut in the $20 million range, nabbed the fifth-largest opening ever for an R-rated romantic-comedy and was fueled by females (75 percent). Black movieogers made up 87 percent of the audience.”

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“Besides being a great movie, the marketing department did a great job of reaching out to the core audience,” Universal distribution chief Nikki Rocco said of the film’s success.

The R-rated romantic comedy features an all-Black cast of Morris Chestnut, Taye Diggs, Regina Hall, Terrence Howard, Sanaa Lathan, Nia Long, Monica Calhoun and Melissa De Sousa. The first film, which opened to $9 million in 1999, “is credited with helping to usher in the era of aspirational African-American comedies.”

Check out the complete list of the weekend’s top movies, below.

1. Thor: The Dark World: $38.5 million

2. The Best Man Holiday: $30.6 million

3. Last Vegas: $8.85 million

4. Free Birds: $8.3 million

5. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa: $7.7 million

6. Gravity: $6.3 million

7. Ender’s Game: $6.2 million

8. 12 Years a Slave: $4.7 million

9. Captain Phillips: $4.5 million

10. About Time: $3.5 million

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For 2024’s iteration of MadameNoire and HelloBeautiful’s annual series Women to Know, we knew we wanted to celebrate the people who help make the joys of film and television possible. To create art is to create magic. This year, we spotlight Hollywood Executive’s changing the face of cinema.