| Weekend Box Office [Actuals] Oct 4th -6th 🔺 = New or Expanding / ★ = Recommended |
|
| W I D E |
PLATFORM / SPECIALTY TITLES |
 Joker |
 Pain & Glory |
| 1 🔺 Joker $96.2 *new* REVIEW |
1 🔺 War $1.6 on 305 screens *new* |
| 2 Abominable $11.9 (cum. $37.7) |
2 🔺 My People My Country $875k on 70 screens *new* |
| 3 Downton Abbey $7.9 (cum. $73.6) DAME MAGGIE |
3 Linda Ronstadt... $289k on 204 screens (cum. $2.7) REVIEW |
| 4 Hustlers $6.3 ($91.4) REVIEW, PODCAST, COSTUME DESIGN, SOUNDTRACKING ★ |
4 🔺 The Climbers $156k on 102 screens *new* |
| 5 It Chapter Two $5.3 (cum. $202.1) |
5 🔺 Pain and Glory $152k on 4 screens *new* REVIEW, PODCAST ★ |
| 6 Judy $4.5 (cum. $9) TELLURIDE PREMIERE, PODCAST |
6 🔺 Where's My Roy Cohn? $79k on 26 screens (cum. $222k) |
| 7 Ad Astra $4.1 (cum. $43.2) REVIEW ★ |
7 Promare $79k on 33 screens (cum. $1.2) |
numbers on that chart are pulled from boxofficemojo
The only thing predictable in the US these days, besides the president being idiotic / causing damage to the nation and world, is that superhero or superhero adjacent movies will open huge. If we were to attempt to explain their ever growing appeal -- the trend shows no signs of waning (if anything it's growing) -- we might conjecture that with the world falling apart around us everyone is feeling increasingly powerless to stop it. Thus the fantasy / popularity of the superpowered or super-powered adjacent. Who knows but Joker easily beat the previous October record set by Venom last year.
In other box office news, Judy went wide after just one week in moderate release. The biopic of the World's Greatest Entertainer is quite a showcase for the long lost Renée Zellweger so good on her for making the most of it. It expanded well with the second best per screen average among the wide releases this week (first place going to Joker, naturally).
In other actress/Oscar buzzy JLo is still filling movie theaters a month after Hustlers' release and the well reviewed stripper drama is looking good to cross the $100 million mark soon.
FINALLY... A PEDRO PARTY!
Pedro Almodóvar's latest, the Oscar buzzy Pain & Glory (reviewed) which is "auto-fiction" of his own life, opened on four screens with the weekend's best per screen average $40k per theater which is fairly typical for a Pedro opening. Pedro has been consistently popular in US arthouses since 1988's international breakthrough Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (only Matador and Law of Desire came to US theaters before it). None of his films since have ever collected less than a million in US theaters and they're generally about five to ten times more popular overseas. Pain and Glory is coming into its American release having already collected $28 million abroad (putting it just ahead of the global popularity of The Skin I Live In). Will it also score here? It's tough to say because with Almodóvar pictures, it's always about whether or not they grow legs.
Pedro's biggest hits in the US (adjusted for inflation)
- VOLVER (2006) $17.1
Oscar nomination Best Actress. This is easily his top grosser overseas as well, give or take Women on the Verge since that arrived before box office reporting was as thorough so we don't know. Regardless, Volver's Oscar snub in Foreign Film is still utterly mystifying all these years later given that its easily one of the great films of its decade and was very popular in the US, too. - WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN (1988) $15.7
Oscar nomination Foreign Film - ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (1999) $13.9
Oscar win Foreign Film - TALK TO HER (2002) $13.9
Oscar win Original Screenplay - TIE ME UP! TIE ME DOWN! (1990) $8.7
- BAD EDUCATION (2004) $7.3
Both of those two pictures are in the top six highest grossing NC-17 pictures of all time, both roughly about as popular as Ang Lee's Lust, Caustion (2007) - BROKEN EMBRACES (2009) $5.7
- KIKA (1994) $4.3
- HIGH HEELS (1991) $3.7
- THE SKIN I LIVE IN (2011) $3.6
His least popular post-Women picture in the US, whether or not you adjust for inflation, is Julieta (2016) --no, it's not I'm So Excited (2013) though that's what you were surely thinking -- but Julieta was a modest success overseas collecting $20 million.
WHAT DID YOU SEE THIS WEEKEND?