What did you see over the weekend? 
Monday, October 15, 2018 at 8:00PM
NATHANIEL R in Bad Times at the El Royale, Colette, First Man, box office

by Nathaniel R

Venom and A Star is Born remained strong for a second weekend leaving much less to go around for First Man, Goosebumps 2,  and Bad Times at the El Royale though it's still a stronger October at the box office than the past two years have been...

Weekend Box Office
(October 12-14)

W I D E
800+ screens
PLATFORM / LIMITED
excluding prev. wide
1. 🔺 Venom $35 (cum. $142.1)
1. 🔺 The Hate U Give $1.7
on 248 screens (cum. $2.4) 
2. A Star is Born $28.4 (cum. $94.6)
Review, Posterized
2. 🔺Gosnell: The Trial of... $1.1 
*NEW * on 673 screens 
3. 🔺 First Man  $16 NEW 
Capsule Review
3. 🔺 Colette $999k on 593 screens 
(cum. $2.5) Capsule
4. 🔺 Goosebumps 2 $15.8  NEW 4. Old Man and the Gun $917k
on 228 screens (cum. $1.7) Review 
5. Smallfoot $9 
(cum. $57.3)  Warner Animation
5. 🔺 Free Solo $890k
on 129  screens  (cum. $2.1)  
6. Night School $7.7 (cum. $59.5)
6. 🔺 The Sisters Brothers $263k
on 129 screens (cum. $1)  Review
7. 🔺 Bad Times at the El Royale  $7.1
NEW Review
7. 🔺 Beautiful Boy $218k on 4 screens NEW
8. The House with the Clock... 
$3.8 (cum. $62.1)
8. The Wife $206k on 201 screens
(cum. $7.2) ReviewBlurb, Best Actress
9. The Nun $1.3 (cum. $115.9)
Nun Movies
9. 🔺Jane and Emma $122k on 21 screens
NEW

10. A Simple Favor $1.3 (cum. $51.9)
Nun Movies Capsule
10. 🔺 Tea With the Dames $89k 
on 64 screens (cum. $292k)
🔺 = new or expanding theater count
numbers (in millions unless otherwise noted) from box office mojo 

 

A few more key noteworthy items:

• There were several small releases this weekend that didn't make the top ten in limited: The Happy Prince, Bigger, The Oath, and Charm City, Stella's Last Weekend, Liyana, Over the Limit,   all of which made under $40k 
• The Hate U Give
goes wide next weekend but has been performing very very well in limited release, which is good news for rising star Amandla Sternberg who is only 19 but was headlining three films this year (the other two, The Darkest Minds and Where Hands Touch, flopped). 
Old Man and the Gun, Robert Redford's swansong is getting a big expansion next weekend too, though not quite wide, after performing well in very limited release
• If you're wondering what Jane & Emma is, that's a new Mormon film about one of the first African-American members of the LDS church so its screens are presumably all out west.
• Beautiful Boy starring Timothée Chalamet got off to a strong start in NY and LA with the weekend's highest per screen average by far.  (That said it's half as much as Call Me By Your Name made in its first weekend on the same amount of screens. The question is will it expand better or be more bold about it? Call Me By Your Name took its sweet time expanding and many people argued that that hurt the picture)
We The Animals inched over $400,000 this week but at only 3 theaters and barely selling tickets now it will surely be its last week in theaters. Pity it didn't catch on because what a great memoir adaptation that was. Every person who wants more films about LGBT people and POC really ought to have seen it.
• It's been tough going for foreign films in release (their piece of the box office puzzle seems to shrink every single year). Several of the submissions for the Oscar this year are in theaters currently: Israel's The Cakemaker, the UK's I Am Not a Witch, Iran's No Date No Signature, and France's Memoir of War  butmost of them are struggling to even reach $100k in revenue. The notable exception is The Cakemaker which has been a success in arthouses but it looks like it will fall short of breaking the $1 million mark -- still, a valiant effort considering its grossed $861,000 over the past 16 weeks in theaters. 

 WHAT DID YOU SEE THIS WEEKEND?

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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