Battle at the Box Office 10/1

Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish took the top spot at the box office with Night School over the weekend as September wrapped up.

Night School took in $27.3 million, which almost matches its budget of $29 million in just one weekend.  It was the 10th best opening for Kevin Hart and the second best for Tiffany Haddish, although $4 million down from Girls Trip, which put Haddish in the spotlight and has the same director as Night School, Malcolm D. Lee.

Smallfoot took second place with $23 million, which is up from Warner Bros Animation’s Storks, which made $21.3 million back in 2016.  It’s slightly below similar movies like Captain Underpants and The Emoji Movie and it’s one of the lower opening animated movies of 2018, although it did meet the expectations of the studio.

Last week’s number #1, The House with a Clock in its Walls, dropped to third place with $12.6 million, slightly over a 52% from last weekend.  It’s made just under $45 million for its two weeks out.

A Simple Favor and The Nun rounded out the top 5 with the former showing fantastic hold and only dropping 36% from last weekend with another $6.5 million and it’s made just over $43 million.  As far as The Nun goes, it’s now the highest grossing movie worldwide for The Conjuring franchise with over $329 million, topping Conjuring 2’s $320 million worldwide.  Domestically though, the first Conjuring is still on top with $137 million compared to The Nun’s current $109 million.

The week’s other new release, Hell Fest, opened in sixth place with $5.1 million.  It’s sitting between Serial Killer movies like Copycat and The Vanishing and it’s slightly above the studio’s expectations and the movie also only cost $5.5 million to make.

The best Per Theater performance went to Free Solo, a documentary about free climbers that made $75,201 in each of the four theaters it opened in.