The Accountant definitely solidifies Affleck’s status as a “star” in today’s much-diminished Hollywood firmament, and validates Warner Bros. choice of the actor to portray Batman. Driven by a strong TV ad campaign, The Accountant, which was directed by Gavin O’Connor, posted a stronger debut than previous Affleck-starring adult dramas like The Town ($23.8 million) and Argo ($19.5 million). The critics didn’t much care for The Accountant, which has a mediocre 51% positive rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, but audiences, which were predominantly male (58%) and older (86% over 25), gave the film a solid “A-“ CinemaScore, which typically indicates a fairly lengthy box office run, though there will be additional competition for that older male audience from Tom Cruise’s Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, which debuts next weekend.
If Ben Affleck has a strong appeal to older viewers, Kevin Hart is a magnet for younger fans. Hart’s comedy concert film What Now? debuted with $11.8 million, the biggest haul ever for a stand-up comedy concert movie. The gender-balanced audience (51% female) skewed way younger than The Accountant with 46% under 25, and they also gave the film an “A-“ CinemaScore. With solid critical reviews as well (currently 78% positive on RT), What Now?, which was made for under $10 million, should be solidly profitable. Opening weekend audiences for the stand-up film were 43% African-American, 24% Caucasian, and 23% Hispanic.
Last week’s winner, Universal’s The Girl on the Train, may well end up at #2 when the final numbers come out tomorrow. The Emily Blunt-starring thriller dropped 51.2 %, a fairly steep decline for an “adult drama” like this, but understandable since The Girl on the Train targets the same demographic as The Accountant.
The fourth and fifth spots went to two $110 million productions that have been neck and neck since they debuted three weekends ago. Tim Burton’s Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children continues to get the better Peter Berg’s disaster film Deepwater Horizon. This weekend Miss Peregrine’s declined 41.2% as it earned $8.9 million to bring its domestic total to $65.8 million, while Deepwater slipped 44.9% as it earned $6.35 million to give it a North American total $49.3 million. But the real difference between this two films is how they are doing overseas. Miss Peregrine’s is approaching a global total of $200 million, while Deepwater’s worldwide sum is just $77 million.
Antoine Fuqua’s western The Magnificent Seven is also suffering from a lack of overseas business. After four weekends, The Magnificent Seven has earned $85 million here in the States, but only $64 million overseas. The “western” genre still looks like it is on life support.
Nate Parker’s controversial saga of the Nat Turner rebellion, Birth of a Nation, will have to do its damage in the home entertainment sphere. It dropped 61.2% in its second weekend as it slipped to #10.
The starless, bargain basement superhero film Max Steel, which is based on a Mattel action figure, debuted outside the top ten, earning just $2.1 million from 2043 theaters, the 13th worse opening ever for a film that opened in more than 2000 venues. Max Steel currently has a 0% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which in this case, at least, is a pretty good predictor of the this film’s chances for success.
Be sure to check back here next week to ascertain the fate of a quartet of modestly-budgeted films that include the Tom Cruise-starring jack Reacher: Never Go Back, Tyler Perry’s Boo! A Medea Halloween, the ensemble comedy Keeping Up With the Joneses and the horror sequel Ouija: Origin of Evil.
