The latest box office rankings are coming in with what scored well this weekend and it’s a decent enough weekend overall. The Friday the 13th “holiday” likely helped a bit with the solid marketing for Happy Death Day from Universal and Blumhouse as the film, which was made for $4.8 million, pulled in a $26 million debut and helps to bolster the studios numbers and profits nicely. These continue to be smartly executed and marketed films that keep costs down and space out well enough while trying to do different things within the genre.
The other new film this weekend was Jackie Chan’s latest more serious action film with The Foreigner which did $12.8 million in 2,500 screens. It had an expected $10 million opening so it did well here and got a great CinemaScore and I’m looking forward to seeing it tonight. It’s naturally skewing more toward male and older audiences so it’s not expected to have a long domestic life. The film opened internationall previously however and has over $100 million there on its $35 million budget with $66 million coming from China so far.
Also out this weekend was Marshall in limited release which hit expectations in 821 screens where it did $3 million and will hopefully expand more in the coming weeks.
The last of the new films that came out this weekend was Professor Marston and the Wonder Women and it pretty much bombed by not even making the top twelve. Showing in 1,229 screens, it did just $737,000 for the weekend even with strong reviews and the connection to Wonder Woman. I caught this on Friday at an afternoon show and anecdotally was the only one in that screening. I enjoyed it a whole lot though and for those looking for unconventional romance films it’s worth checking out.
Sadly, Blade Runner 2049 isn’t holding up well already combined with its long running time as the film did just $15 million this weekend which brings it up to $60 domestically. It’s done $98 million oversas and has some big markets still to open in with China and Japan but the film is not going to break even in the slightest at this point, though hopefully it hasn’t killed chances of more stories being told in this world.
Next weekend has a big budget disaster film hitting with Geostorm from Warner Bros. while Universal goes for something smaller with The Snowman thriller. Sony looks to hit up some firefighter action with Only the Brave while Lionsgate serves up A Medea Halloween to scare up some cash.
