Battle at the Box Office 9/17
The Predator topped the box office but it wasn’t really a success with viewers and by dollars.
The Predator took in $24 million, which is now the worst opening ever for a movie in over 4,000 theaters, topping last year’s failed attempt at kickstarting the Dark Universe, The Mummy. It’s also the worst opening than Predators from 2010, which had $24.76 million for its opening in around half as many theaters. Audiences also awarded it a pretty bad “C+” for a Cinemascore. It’s Shane Black’s second-best opening behind Iron Man 3 but he’s also only made four movies as a director.
The Nun took a huge tumble in its second weekend, falling over 66% to second place with $18.2 million, bringing it to just over $85 million total. That fall between first and second weekend is the steepest drop ever for The Conjuring franchise but it also grossed over $228 million worldwide on a $22 million budget, so who knows what WB will learn, if anything, for future entries in the series.
A Simple Favor, Paul Feig’s mystery thriller, took third place with $16 million. It’s one of the worst openings for Paul Feig, only topping Unaccompanied Minors as far as openings go but audiences seemed to generally like it, giving a B+ on Cinemascore.
White Boy Rick took fourth place with $8.8 million. It’s number 20 as far as openings for Matthew McConaughey. Crazy Rich Asians rounded out the top 5 with another $8.7 million, bringing its domestic total to just barely shy of $150 million and it’s made $187 million worldwide.
The last new release for the weekend, Unbroken: Path to Redemption came in ninth place with $2.3 million. That is a massive drop from the first film, which made $28 million its opening weekend but was in twice as many theaters and wasn’t pushing the faith angle quite as overtly as this sequel, which was also put out by Pure Flix as opposed to Universal for the original. It’s the fourth best opening for a Christian focused movie in 2018.
M:I Fallout has become the highest grossing Mission: Impossible film of all time both worldwide and domestically, crossing over $216 million domestically and $760 million worldwide. The Meg and Hotel Transylvania 3 also both topped over $500 million worldwide over the weekend.
The best Per Theater average went to Spanish heist/crime thriller Museo, which is a “based on true events” movie starring Gael Garcia Bernal and it made $17,500 on the one theater it was playing at over the weekend.