A big weekend for Parasite and The Lighthouse
Sunday, October 20, 2019 at 6:56PM
NATHANIEL R in Maleficent, The Lighthouse, box office

by Nathaniel R

Weekend Box Office [ESTIMATES]
Oct 18th-20th
🔺 = New or Expanding / ★ = Recommended
W I D E
PLATFORM / SPECIALTY TITLES
1 🔺  MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL  $36 *new*
1 🔺 PARASITE $1.2 on 33 screens (cum. $1.8) PODCAST â˜…
2 JOKER $29.2 (cum. $247.2) REVIEW
2 🔺 PAIN AND GLORY $463k on 67 screens (cum. $1.1) REVIEWPODCAST â˜…
3 🔺 ZOMBIELAND DOUBLE TAP $26.7 *new*  REVIEW
3  THE LIGHTHOUSE $419k on 8 screens *new* REVIEW â˜…
4 THE ADDAMS FAMILY  $16 ($56.8) 
4 🔺 JOJO RABBIT $350k on 5 screens *new* TIFF WINNER â˜…
5 GEMINI MAN $8.5 (cum. $36.5) REVIEW
5 🔺 LINDA RONSTADT... $188k on 147 screens (cum. $3.5) REVIEW


numbers on that chart are pulled from boxofficemojo

Parasite is dominating in the arthouse theaters. The Lighthouse and JoJo Rabbit followed it, all shiny new, to packed houses. This bodes well for their continued expansion and Oscar dreams. The Lighthouse at least isn't going to wait. It adds 500 or so screens next weekend. Adults were clearly starved in the late summer for some serious or ambitious movies. Meanwhile in wide release sequels to  Maleficent and Zombieland arrived. The Maleficent sequel did half the business or the original in its first weekend which isn't quite as bad as it sounds since the original opened in the heat of summer movie season (when ticket sales are much brisker) and the sequel arrived in October. But Zombieland 2 was roughly off to the same size of a start. 

In other box office news this week, Hustlers passed the key $100 million mark (an enormous success as original adult dramas and female-directed films go). Downton Abbey also passed Brokeback Mountain to become the biggest hit in the history of Focus Features. The big question now is whether the TV-to-big-screen sequel can last a few more weeks and pass Rocketman to become the biggest hit with gay subject matter this year.  

WHAT DID YOU SEE THIS WEEKEND?

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