by Nathaniel R
The return of Jamie Lee Curtis to the Halloween franchise meant big business in movie theaters over the weekend, continuing a strong October. Meanwhile A Star is Born held on to second place for a third consecutive week. It's already the highest grossing release of 2018 to never hit #1, since its surpassed the Mamma Mia sequel's gross. A lot of platform releases kicked off this week to in the rev up to awards season. More after the jump...
| Weekend Box Office (October 19-21) |
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| W I D E 800+ screens |
PLATFORM / LIMITED excluding prev. wide |
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| 1. 🔺 Halloween $76.2 *NEW* Review |
1. 🔺 Free Solo $1 on 251 screens (cum. $3.6) |
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| 2. A Star is Born $19 (cum. $126.1) Review, Posterized, Podcast |
2. Gosnell: The Trial of... $640k on 511 screens (cum. $2.4) |
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| 3. Venom $18 (cum. $171) |
3. Colette $619k on 520 screens (cum. $3.7) Capsule, Podcast |
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| 4. Goosebumps 2 $9.7 (cum. $28.8) |
4.🔺 Beautiful Boy $415k on 48 screens (cum. $698k) |
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| 5. First Man $8.3 (cum. $29.7) Capsule Review, Podcast |
5. 🔺 Mid90s $258k *NEW* on 4 screens |
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| 6. 🔺 The Hate U Give $7.6 (cum. $10.7) Review |
6. 🔺 The Oath $227k on 300 screens (cum. $265k) |
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| 7. Smallfoot $6.5 (cum. $66.3) Warner Animation |
7. 🔺 Can You Ever Forgive Me? $161k *NEW* on 5 screens Review |
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| 8. Night School $4.8 (cum. $66.7) |
8. Anhadhun $147k on 62 screens (cum. $959k) |
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| 9. Bad Times at the El Royale $3.4 (cum. $13.4) Review |
9. The Wife $130k on 130 screens (cum. $7.4) Review, Blurb, Best Actress |
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| 10. 🔺 The Old Man and the Gun $2.1 (cum. $4.2) Review |
10. 🔺 Wildlife $104k on 4 screens *NEW* Review, Carey Mulligan |
| 🔺 = new or expanding theater count numbers (in millions unless otherwise noted) from box office mojo |
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Some thoughts...
• It looks like Free Solo is shaping up to be yet another documentary to pass the 8 figure mark this year and it keeps expanding really well, securing its first million dollar weekend in its fourth weekend of release. What a strong year for interest in docs this has been.
• Robert Redford is still a draw at 82 years of age. Remember when A Walk in the Woods made unexpected bank? Well, The Old Man & The Gun is off to a strong start, too
• I was a bit surprised at the Mid90s take when they had only Jonah Hill in the director's chair to really sell it. Somehow it did better than Can You Ever Forgive Me? and Wild Life in their similar sized opening weekend (though they all had non-embarrassing per screen averages)
• Nevertheless, as we see each year, the practice of releasing all the adult-aimed Oscar hopefuls in the last three months of the year always has casualties. There are way too many acclaimed Oscar hopefuls seeking basically the same audience so Can You and Wildlife didn't open as well as they could have in maybe another weekend and What They Had starring Hilary Swank got lost in the shuffle making only $17,000+ in its opening weekend on 4 screens while Denmark's Oscar hopeful The Guilty was on 29 screens but earned only $60,000.
• First Man, Damien Chazelle's handsome moon-landing drama is struggling to find its passionate audience earning only $55.4 million to date globally on a $59 million budget. (For comparison's sake La La Land was half as expensive and brought in $446 million globally by the end of its run).
WHAT DID YOU SEE THIS WEEKEND?