Black Phone 2 took advantage of its proximity to Halloween and won the weekend box office with a higher-than-expected opening.
Black Phone 2 debuted with $27.3 million domestically. The first movie opened to $23.6 million in 2022 but cost about half as much as Black Phone 2. With $42.8 million total so far worldwide, Black Phone 2 should be profitable unless something catastrophic happens. Audience reaction was solid with an 85% Audience Rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a B CinemaScore, which is solid for a horror film. For Blumhouse, this opening is between The Invisible Man and The Exorcist: Believer.
Tron: Ares took a huge tumble from last weekend’s already disappointing opening, dropping 67% with another $11.1 million domestically. It has made $54.5 million domestically and $103.1 million worldwide, and now, with two weeks of data, the industry estimates predict it will lose around $132 million for Disney. Deadline reported that the budget for the film was actually a massive $220 million, not $170-180 million that was previously reported. That would mean the movie needs around $440 million worldwide to potentially just break even, which is basically an impossibility given its performance.
Good Fortune opened in third place with $6.1 million domestically. Given its star-studded cast and marketing push, that’s a disappointing start for Lionsgate. The movie got a B+ rating on Cinemascore, which is decent but not great. It has an 80% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, so we’ll have to see how it holds going into weekend #2.
One Battle After Another and Roofman rounded out the top 5, with the latter dropping 54% from last weekend’s opening, making another $3.7 million domestically and bringing its total to $15.5 million.
Truth & Treason opened outside the top 5 with $2.6 million. After the Hunt expanded widely into 1,238 theaters, it made $1.5 million and took ninth place. This was a potential Oscar contender but it doesn’t seem like it’s making much of an impact. It got a C- CinemaScore, so audiences were definitely not on board.
The best per-theater average went to It Was Just an Accident, which made $22,765 in each of the three theaters it played in.
