September has wrapped up at the box office and it was a pretty good month overall with some strong films and Warner Bros. dominating a good bit of it that continued from August. This weekend saw Night School from Universal Pictures taking the top spot with a $28 million debut, riding on the name power for Kevin Hart and Tiffany Hadish. As a PG-13 comedy that let more people get into it, the film got an A- CinemaScore and played to a 50/50 gender split. With a $29 million production budget, things are going to look good for this as it moves through a few more weeks plus broadcast, pay per view, and home video releases.
Also new this week was Smallfoot, which for Warner Bros. didn’t hit what they were hoping for and may have landed too soon on the calendar. The budget isn’t known for this but it opened with a $23 million take domestically plus another $15 million overseas in half the markets. It’s pretty much on par with what Storks did a few years ago and could do roughly the same, which was just under $75 million domestic when all is said and done.
The other new film this week to go wide was Hell Fest from CBS Films which landed in fifth with a $5 million take. It got a low CinemaScore of just a C but it leaned a bit more female-oriented in its audience and over twenty-five.
This week also saw an anime film break the mainstream top twelve with its box office take as My Hero Academia: Two Heroes landed $1.275 million for Funimation Films.
With what came before, The Nun may have done just $5.4 million here to bring it to $109 million, but it did another $16 million overseas to bring that side to $221 million, or a $330 million worldwide take. Which now marks it as the highest grossing film in the Conjuring franchise on the international side and the worldwide side.
Next weekend should make for some interesting returns as we see the debut of Venom, which is tracking high and opening in 4,000 screens for Sony, while Warner Bros. is looking at some growing interest and buzz on A Star is Born.
