Spectre’s 50% drop was a very good “hold” for a heavily-hyped action film. It was actually better than Skyfall’s 53% second weekend drop (but then Skyfall had to contend with competition from the debuting finale of the Twilight Saga—and also posted a much bigger debut). So far Spectre has earned $130 million domestic, which is well short of Skyfall’s $161 million ten-day total. Spectre should end up well over the $200 million mark here in North America, but any domestic deficiencies versus Skyfall should be made up overseas where Spectre has been performing exceptionally well, including a record-breaking (for a 2D film) $48 million debut in China. Spectre’s big challenge will be next week’s debut of The Hunger Games finale, but after that the latest Bond film should have little action film competition until Star Wars: The Force Awakens debuts on December 18.
For the second weekend in a row The Peanuts Movie took second place as it dropped 45.3%, earning $24.2 million and bringing its domestic total to $82.5 million. It is instructive to note that a 45.3% drop is actually a bit of a “bad” hold for a major animated movie (there is a huge difference in the way that films of various genres attract audiences). So the jury is still out on The Peanuts Movie, which will soon face stiff competition from Disney’s The Good Dinosaur.
The holiday-themed comedy/drama Meet the Coopers was the lone semi-bright spot among the newcomers. The $17 million production earned $8.4 million on its debut weekend, and has a shelf life that should keep it modestly successful through the next few weeks, though not likely much longer. Females made up 70% of the audience, which definitely skewed older, with 82% of the audience over 25.
Ridley Scott’s The Martian slid to #4 in its seventh weekend in theaters as it earned $6.7 million and brought its domestic cumulative to $207.4 million. It has been the surprise megahit of the fall and is now Scott’s highest-grossing film. In addition it appears to be well-positioned for multiple Oscar nominations, which could extend its theatrical run (or at least revive it) in 2016.
Warner Bros. just hasn’t had much good box office luck lately and The 33, a true life drama based on the rescue of Chilean miners, debuted in 2,452 theaters and earned just $5.8 million for a poor $2,412 average. This $26 million production appears doomed in North America, but it has already earned $12.6 million in Latin America, and should do well enough overseas to keep losses to a minimum. Opening weekend audiences skewed slightly female (51%) and quite a bit older (73% over 25).
Sixth and seventh places went to Sony’s kid-targeting horror film Goosebumps, which has now earned $73 million domestically (versus a production cost of $58 million), and Steven Spielberg’s adult-skewing Cold War drama Bridge of Spies, which has now earned $61.7 million. Both films debuted five weekends ago, with Goosebumps taking the top spot and getting more attention, though in the long run Bridge of Spies, because of its lower cost ($40 million) and its appeal to older audiences (which should extend its theatrical run) is likely the more successful film.
The Bollywood film Prem Ratan Dhan Payo took the eighth spot with an estimated $2.4 million from just 286 theaters (thanks to a healthy per-venue average of $8,392. This film set a box office record in India with an opening weekend of $27 million, so it is no surprise that it has done well here where a growing Indian population has not been especially well-served by theater owners. Look for more Bollywood openings in the top ten in the future, particularly during weeks when only a few American films are really “crushing” it at the box office.
This week’s third new wide release, the faith-based high school sports drama My All-American, debuted weakly outside the top ten, earning just $1.3 million from 1,565 theaters, a poor showing for a film that was written and directed by Angelo Pizzo, who wrote the very successful sports dramas Hoosiers, and Rudy.
There is still one more flop to report this week, though one should perhaps be careful about making a premature judgment. Still the Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt film, By the Sea, a marital drama that channels the emptiness and ennui of Antonioni’s interminably boring (and still highly overrated) 1970s dissections of marital life among the rich and bored, earned just $95,440 from ten theaters. This is a very poor showing for a film in such limited release, and the film’s pitiful 12% positive rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes suggests that By the Sea will disappear beneath waves of public disinterest in very short order.
Be sure to check back here next weekend to see to what extent the final Hunger Games film revives what has been a struggling fall box office, and to check out the prospects for the well-reviewed church scandal drama Spotlight, which goes wide, as well as the American remake of the excellent Argentinean film Secret in Their Eyes.
