As expected Spectre, the latest entry in the James Bond film franchise, posted the second best opening in franchise history, topping the box office with an estimated $73 million.  With the aid of another newcomer, the animated Peanuts Movie, Spectre helped Hollywood revive the faltering fall box office this weekend, boosting the earnings of the top twelve films 6.1% over the same frame last year when Big Hero Six debuted with $56 million.

Few analysts thought Spectre had a chance at topping Skyfall’s $88.4 million franchise record, but many expected that Spectre would earn at least $80 million, so it wasn’t quite the “home run” Tinseltown was hoping for, though after October’s series of strike outs, a triple looks pretty good.  And, as is typical these days with long-in-the-tooth franchises (like the Terminator, etc.), new films in the series tend to do better overseas.  Spectre earned $117.8 million overseas this weekend, and has already amassed a worldwide total of $300 million.  Since Spectre cost $250 million just to produce, some analysts say that it will have to earn $900 million worldwide to hit the black (the studios get a smaller percentage of foreign grosses, in fact only 25% of earnings in China go back to the studios).

The opening weekend audience for Spectre was predominantly male (62%) and definitely older with 75% of the ticket buyers over 25, and they gave the film a solid “A-“ CinemaScore, which should mean another strong box office week before the opening of the final Hunger Games movie begins to siphon away potential customers.

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): November 6-8, 2015
	Film	Weekend Gross	Screens	Avg./Screen	Total Gross	Wk#
1	Spectre	$73,000,000	3,929	$18,580	$73,000,000	1
2	The Peanuts Movie	$45,000,000	3,897	$11,547	$45,000,000	1
3	The Martian	$9,300,000	2,855	$3,257	$197,067,346	6
4	Goosebumps	$6,965,000	3,051	$2,283	$66,440,954	4
5	Bridge of Spies	$6,086,000	2,767	$2,199	$54,971,952	4
6	Hotel Transylvania 2	$3,550,000	2,274	$1,561	$161,293,404	7
7	Burnt	$3,003,000	3,003	$1,000	$10,211,287	2
8	The Last Witch Hunter	$2,650,000	2,286	$1,159	$23,571,701	3
9	The Intern	$1,810,000	1,071	$1,690	$71,407,251	7
10	Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension	$1,650,000	1,087	$1,518	$16,281,378	3

Second place went to The Peanuts Movie, which earned an estimated $45 million.  A collaboration between Fox’s Blue Sky Studios (the Ice Age movies) and members of the family of Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz, who insisted on a large measure of control before allowing Fox to gain the rights, The Peanuts Movie benefited from strong reviews (85% positive on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes).  Opening weekend audiences skewed a bit female (55%), with families making up 70% of a fairly diverse audience that included 26% Hispanics.  The good news for Fox was an excellent “A” CinemaScore, which should keep The Peanuts Movie in theaters for quite some time.

Meanwhile Ridley Scott’s The Martian, one of this fall’s few signature successes, dropped just 20.6% in spite of competition from Spectre, as it earned $9.3 million, bringing its domestic cumulative to $197 million, making it Scott’s highest grossing film yet (not accounting for inflation) as it passed Gladiator’s 2000 total of $187.7 million.

The rest of the top ten posted modest drops from already low totals.  The big successes here are the animated Hotel Transylvania 2, which should finish with over $170 million domestic, and Nancy Meyers’ modestly-budgeted comedy The Intern, which has earned $71.4 million in seven weeks of release.  Box office duds include the Chef drama Burnt, the Vin Diesel-starring fantasy The Last Witch Hunter, the Sandra Bullock drama Our Brand Is Crisis, which dropped out of the top ten in its second weekend, Guillermo Del Toro’s Crimson Peak, and Danny Boyle/Aaron Sorkin’s Steve Jobs, which is now down to a mere 421 venues.

Two extremely well-reviewed adult-skewing dramas opened in limited release.  Spotlight, which recounts the efforts of Boston Globe reporters to uncover the extent of the sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, averaged $60,455 from 5 theaters, while the period drama Brooklyn averaged $36,200 from a similar number of theaters.  Spotlight is slated to expand next weekend, so its fate should be a lot clearer by this time next week.

Be sure to check back here next week to see what happens to a trio of new films, The 33, a docudrama about the Chilean miners who were trapped underground for 69 days, the sports drama My All-American, and the comedy Love the Coopers.