Battle at the Box Office 10/9/23

The Exorcist: Believer took the top spot at the box office over the weekend but Universal might be second-guessing the $400 million they paid for the rights to the franchise.

The Exorcist: Believer made $26.4 million to win the box office weekend and $43.8 million worldwide.  That’s slightly below most big horror movies this year, like M3GAN, Insidious: The Red Door, Scream VI, and, most recently, The Nun II.  It did top the opening of Saw X last weekend.  It’s way below the openings of director David Gordon Green’s Halloween trilogy, with the lowest-grossing movie in that series still opening to over $40 million.  Universal is probably pot-committed and will keep making new Exorcist movies in this rebooted franchise but it doesn’t seem like they will be recouping their investment anytime soon.  The reviews for Believer were abysmal and it has a C Cinemascore, so we could see a massive drop-off this coming weekend.

Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie dropped to second place, falling 50% from last weekend’s opening with another $11.3 million.  It has $38.4 million so far domestically and $86.6 million worldwide.

Saw X had a fairly solid hold for a horror movie, dropping 57% from last weekend and making another $7.8 million, bringing it to $32.2 million domestically and $43.5 million worldwide.  It is outpacing Jigsaw, Spiral and Saw VI day to day and it was on pace with the original Saw, but that distance has widened in the second weekend with Saw putting some space between them.

The Creator and The Blind rounded out the top 5, with the latter only dropping 28% from last weekend and making another $3.2 million for $10.5 million so far domestically.  The Creator dropped 57% from last weekend and made another $6 million for $24.9 million domestically and $61.8 million worldwide.

Further down the list, Hocus Pocus had an anniversary re-release and took 10th place with $1.5 million in 1,430 theaters.

Dicks the Musical from A24 took the Per Theater average with $31,552 in 7 theaters, which is one of the best per theater averages of 2023.