Thanks to It, the box office total of the top 12 films was 22.7% ahead of the same frame last year when real life drama Sully debuted with $35 million. After the disastrous months of July and August in which the 2017 year-over-year box office totals were down nearly 7%, the success of It has almost singlehandedly narrowed the gap with 2016 to just over 5%.
In just 10 days It has earned $210.8 million in the domestic market, which is more than the total earned by any other film released in September, not adjusting for inflation—the record was held by Crocodile Dundee ($174.8 million). It appears that It will have no trouble making it past the $300 million mark here in North America, a tremendous feat for a film that cost just $35 million to produce.
It is also doing well overseas where it brought in $60.2 million this weekend for a total of $152.6 million earned outside of North America. It earned a record )for a horror film) $13.8 million in its opening weekend in Mexico, and has brought in $27.7 million in ten days in the U.K. where It also remained at #1 for the second weekend in a row.
Second place went to Lionsgate’s action film American Assassin, which is based on a novel by Vince Flynn (no relation). With a moderate cost of $33 million, American Assassin is off to an OK start with an opening weekend total of $14.8 million that closely parallels that of the 2014 film John Wick ($14.4 million), which sort of created the template for these contemporary R-rated action films.
Third place went to Aronofsky’s mother!, which earned an estimated $7.5 million from about 2,400 theaters for a middling $3,167 average. The critics liked mother! quite a bit, giving the film a 68% positive rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, but audiences, which skewed heavily female (56%) and older (82% over 25), gave the film an “F” CinemaScore, a distinction held by just 18 other movies. In this column, we have often noted the disparity between how the critics and audiences view films. This distinction is especially evident in the horror film genre, because, especially for audiences, job #1 for horror movies is to get the audience’s adrenaline pumping with shocks and/or the sustained tension of suspense. This is in addition to all the other elements that make up a good film, strong acting, well-written characters, a coherent or at least compelling narrative, and a fresh take on genre conventions. It’s that latter element that naturally appeals to critics, who have to watch loads and loads of similar films, but innovation in narrative means less to audiences.
|
Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): September 15-17, 2017 |
||||||
|
Film |
Weekend Gross |
Screens |
Avg./Screen |
Total Gross |
Wk# |
|
|
1 |
It |
$60,000,000 |
4,148 |
$14,465 |
$218,710,619 |
2 |
|
2 |
American Assassin |
$14,800,000 |
3,154 |
$4,692 |
$14,800,000 |
1 |
|
3 |
mother! |
$7,500,000 |
2,368 |
$3,167 |
$7,500,000 |
1 |
|
4 |
Home Again |
$5,334,160 |
3,036 |
$1,757 |
$17,135,244 |
2 |
|
5 |
The Hitman's Bodyguard |
$3,550,000 |
3,272 |
$1,085 |
$70,357,040 |
5 |
|
6 |
Annabelle: Creation |
$2,600,000 |
2,117 |
$1,228 |
$99,900,361 |
6 |
|
7 |
Wind River |
$2,553,586 |
2,619 |
$975 |
$29,122,401 |
7 |
|
8 |
Leap! |
$2,117,930 |
2,416 |
$877 |
$18,659,716 |
4 |
|
9 |
Spider-Man: Homecoming |
$1,875,000 |
1,436 |
$1,306 |
$330,262,248 |
11 |
|
10 |
Dunkirk |
$1,305,000 |
1,478 |
$883 |
$185,141,652 |
9 |
Horror movies also tend to get lower grades from audiences than films in other genres. For example It, which is performing at the box office like a horror film version of The Force Awakens, received only a “B+” CinemaScore, which can be just a middling grade for an action film. There is some hope for mother! overseas where arty films can sometimes take off—and the film’s modest $30 million production cost should limit the damage. A spokesperson for Paramount compared mother! to the cutting edge drama series on Netflix, Amazon, and HBO—and perhaps that where this kind of edgy material is heading anyway--the reception that mother! has received is not likely to make studio execs eager for more cutting edge psychological horror films.
The Reese Witherspoon romantic comedy, Home Again rebounded a bit from its disappointing opening, dropping just 37.7% in its second frame as it earned $5.3 million to bring its ten-day total to $17.1 million, which means that this $12 million film should eventually at least break even.
The rest of the top ten suffered small drops from previously modest totals, though mention should be made of two leggy mid-summer hits, Marvel Studios’ Spider-Man Homecoming, which remained in the top ten for its eleventh straight week as it drove its domestic total to $330.3 million, and Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, which spent its ninth weekend at #10, earning $1.3 million to bring its North American total to $185.1 million.
The box office action should heat up next week as Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Golden Circle, the sequel to 2015’s Kingsman: The Secret Service, which earned $128 million here in North America, debuts in 3,500 theaters, a wide release that will be matched by Warner Brothers’ animated The LEGO Ninjago Movie—and a new social media-centric horror film Friend Request will compete directly with It for the horror movie audience.
