by Nathaniel R
What did you see over the weekend? Both Venom and A Star is Born opened to big numbers making it a strong start to October box office. While Venom isn't as likely to hold well (lower Cinemascore, terrible reviews, and no awards season to maintain interest) both are already hits. More after the jump...
| Weekend Box Office Estimates (October 5-7) |
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| W I D E 800+ screens |
PLATFORM / LIMITED excluding prev. wide |
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| 1. 🔺 Venom $80 *NEW* |
1. 🔺 Free Solo $540k on 41 screens (cum. $953k) |
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| 2. 🔺 A STAR IS BORN $41.2 *NEW* Review, Posterized |
2. 🔺The Hate U Give $500k *NEW * on 36 screens |
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| 3. SMALLFOOT $14.9 (cum. $42.7) Warner Animation Movies |
3. 🔺 Colette $458k on 107 screens (cum. $1.2) Capsule |
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| 4. Night School $12.2 (cum. $46.7) |
4. The Wife $403k on 358 screens (cum. $6.8) Review, Blurb |
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| 5. House with the Clock... $7.2 (cum. $55) |
5. 🔺 Old Man and the Gun $385k on 49 screens (cum. $575k) Review |
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| 6. 🔺 A Simple Favor $3.4 (cum. $49) Capsule |
6. 🔺 Shine $218k *NEW* on 609 screens |
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| 7. The Nun $2.6 (cum. $113.3) Nun Movies |
7. 🔺 Sisters Brothers $207k on 54 screens (cum. $693k) Review |
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| 8. Hell Fest $2 (cum. $8.8) |
8. 🔺 Monsters and Men $177k on 143 screens (cum. $304k) |
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| 9. Crazy Rich Asians $2 (cum. $169.1) Review, Yeoh, Podcast |
9. Little Women $155k on 451 screens (cum. $1.1) |
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| 10. The Predator $900k (cum. $49.9) |
10. 🔺 Tea with the Dames $67k on 44 screens (cum. $154k) |
| 🔺 = new or expanding theater count numbers (in millions unless otherwise noted) from box office mojo |
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A few more key noteworthy items:
• Loving Pablo starring Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz opened with very little promotion at 15 screens and barely eked out a $1000 per screen average.
• Colette continues to expand well and I have to admit I'm surprised. I thought it wouldn't prove exciting enough for audiences to generate any real word of mouth.
• Rebooting every franchise doesn't work. The Predator lost over a thousand theaters in its fourth weekend and has a dismal $548 screen average already. It will close well short of its $88 million budget domestically but perhaps the overseas take will save it since it's made and additional $73 million overseas thus far?
• Disney's Christopher Robin mysteriously added nearly a 1000 screens in its 10th weekend which usually means the movie in question has been pushed to a double-bill on drive-ins as the studio is trying to manipulate the numbers to push said film over some box-office marker. This happened earlier in the year with both Black Panther and A Wrinkle in Time to just barely help them to the $700 million and $100 million grosses respectively (it worked). It won't this time since the film is is about 2 million shy of the $100 million mark and with a per screen average of $278 it's not going to get there.
• Crazy Rich Asians has some new things to brag about in its 8th weekend: It's now the 10th biggest hit of 2018, the fourth most successful romantic comedy of the 21st century (after My Big Fat Greek Wedding, What Women Want, and Hitch), the #1 romantic comedy of this decade (Silver Linings Playbook now a distant second), and by far the leggiest film of the year given that it only opened at $26 million whereas all of the other blockbusters opened at $50 million on up). If it holds onto a top ten placement for one more week it'll become only the third movie this year to survive that long! For what it's worth these are the only 2018 films that stayed in the top ten for two full months:
- Black Panther - 13 weeks in top ten / 5 at the very top (#1 film of the year domestic)
- Avengers Infinity War - 9 weeks in top ten / 3 at the very top (#1 film of the year global)
- Crazy Rich Asians - 8 weeks in top ten / 3 at the very top (#10 film of the year domestically)
- [TIE] Mission: Impossible - Fallout / A Quiet Place - 8 weeks in top ten / 2 at the very top
- Incredibles 2 - 8 weeks in top ten / only one week at the top (#3 film of year domestic/ #4 globally)
WHAT DID YOU SEE THIS WEEKEND?