Battle at the Box Office 10/30/23
Despite a tepid reception from critics, fans of Five Nights at Freddy’s seemingly came out in droves for the movie adaptation of the video game, as it had a massive opening that knocked Taylor Swift off the top spot at the box office.
Five Nights at Freddy’s opened to $80 million, which is the third-best horror opening of all time unadjusted for inflation, behind IT and IT Chapter Two. It’s also the best opening ever for Blumhouse, topping 2018’s Halloween and easily the biggest horror movie of 2023, topping the likes of Scream VI, M3GAN, and The Nun II. For video game movies, it’s now the second biggest opening of all time behind The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which opened in April this year to over $146 million. FNAF supplants Sonic the Hedgehog 2, which moves down to third place with $72 million. Worldwide, FNAF has $132.6 million, which is also the best worldwide debut ever for Blumhouse. The movie got an A- CinemaScore as well, so the people who went to see it in theaters were mostly happy and it could indicate it might have some legs going into the next week or two. We’ll have to see next week how much it drops and how front-loaded it was. The movie also debuted on Peacock and was apparently huge on that streaming platform as well, with reportedly the biggest opening weekend for a film on Peacock as far as viewership.
Taylor Swift| The Eras Tour dropped to second place with another $15.4 million. The concert film now has $150 million domestically and $202.6 million worldwide. Worldwide it is the 31st biggest movie of the year and it’s currently 16th domestically for the year.
Killers of the Flower Moon took a pretty steep tumble to third place, losing 60% from last weekend’s opening and making another $9.3 million for $40.9 million domestically and $53.4 million worldwide. The movie did have a solid Cinemascore but it seems like not a lot of people are enduring the massive runtime more than once or are waiting until they can control the pace at home on Apple TV+ later on.
After Death and The Exorcist: Believer rounded out the top 5. The former is the latest hit from Angel Studios, who had the box office sensation Sound of Freedom this summer. After Death is a documentary that explored near-death experiences and it made $5 million for its opening weekend.
Further down the list, the John Cena/Alison Brie movie Freelance was pretty much DOA in 8th place with just over $2 million. There was basically no promotion with just a barely seen trailer and a poster or two and obviously, Cena and Brie were unable to get out and promote the movie due to the SAG-AFTRA strike. It feels like a movie that should have debuted on a streaming service instead of in theaters.
The Per Theater average went to Alexander Payne’s latest film, The Holdovers, which made $35,179 in each of the 6 theaters it was playing in over the weekend.