Battle at the Box Office 9/23
Downton Abbey fended off both Brad Pitt and Sly Stallone to emerge on top of the box office for this past weekend.
Downton Abbey made $31 million, which is the biggest opening ever for Focus Features, topping their previous biggest opening, Insidious Chapter 3, which made $22.7 million. Downton Abbey is also in the top 20 of live-action TV adaptations, sitting at number 19 between Sex and the City 2 and Star Trek: First Contact. (In case you’re curious, 2009’s Star Trek is the biggest opening live-action TV adaptation with $75.2 million) The audience for Downton Abbey was largely older women and they gave the movie an “A” on Cinemascore.
Brad Pitt managed to just eke out Stallone (at least at the time of this writing) with Ad Astra making $19.2 million to Rambo: Last Blood’s $19 million. Ad Astra sits between Moneyball and Burn After Reading for Brad Pitt openings and as far as Box Office Mojo’s “Sci-Fi: Adventure” category, it’s sitting between Lost in Space and Back to the Future Part III. Rambo managed to just top its predecessor, 2008’s Rambo, which made around $18 million its opening weekend. Unadjusted for inflation, Last Blood is the second-best opening in the franchise, behind Rambo: Last Blood Part II and it is Stallone ninth-best opening of all time between Rock IV and Rambo (2008).
IT: Chapter Two and Hustlers rounded out the top 5, both getting pushed down by the three newcomers. Both movies made another $17 million or so and IT is now over $179 million total domestic while Hustlers is over $62.5 million after two weeks.
Further down the list, Angel Has Fallen took its first major dive thanks to the direct competition of Rambo, falling from third last weekend to eighth this weekend with $2.4 million. It has made $64.6 million domestic, which tops London Has Fallen, and has made just over $118 worldwide.
The Goldfinch predictably crashed and burned after last weekend’s terrible opening. The movie dropped over 71% from last weekend, not even making $1 million in its second weekend but instead $770,000 and dropped to 15th place.
The Per Theater average went to the documentary Where’s My Roy Cohn?, which made $10,591 in each of the four theaters it played in, just barely managing to edge out Downton Abbey’s average in 3,079 theaters.