David Fincher’s adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s novel Gone Girl topped the weekend box office with an estimated $38 million, just a bit ahead of the horror film Annabelle, which earned an estimated $37.2 million.  Together the two new entries powered the top 12 films to a 23% gain over the same weekend a year ago when Gravity debuted with $55.8 million.  In fact this past weekend was the highest grossing October frame ever.
 
Gone Girl, which stars Ben Affleck and should help reinforce his box office drawing power, exceeded expectations with a bow that topped those of fellow “adult” Oscar-hopeful "adult" offerings The Social Network ($22.4 million), Argo ($19.4 million), and Captain Phillips ($25.7 million).  Fincher’s latest film has a good chance of passing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ($127.5 million) to become the director’s biggest money earner.  Gone Girl attracted an audience that was older (75% over 25) and 60% female, a gender imbalance that probably owes a lot to the popularity of Flynn’s novel about the disastrous dissolution of a marriage between two young professionals, who recently lost their jobs in the recession.  Gone Girl, which currently has an excellent "Tomatometer" rating of 87% positive, received only a "B" CinemaScore.  However, the film is off to a great start, and sometimes well-reviewed films from top directors like Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street (77% positive critical rating from review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes) manage to demonstrate great "legs" in spite of mediocre "B" CinemaScores.  Gone Girl might just be the kind of downbeat film that can hang around and pad its totals during a large portion of the fourth quarter.
 
Warner Bros. and New Line’s Annabelle, a spin-off The Conjuring, the surprising old school 2013 horror film hit, which opened with $41.9 million and ended up earning $137.4 million in the domestic market.  So far it looks like this evil doll movie could be the biggest horror hit of 2014.  The "R" rated Annabelle skewed just a bit female (51%) and younger, with 54% of the crowd under 25.   The opening weekend audience gave the film a mediocre "B" CinemaScore, so it may not quite have the "legs" of The Conjuring,, which got an "A,"  but don’t be surprised if Annabelle hangs around longer than the typical horror movie.

The top holdovers also did well this weekend.  Last week’s winner the Denzel Washington-starring The Equalizer dropped just 44.3% as it earned $19 million and brought its domestic total to $64.5 million.  Laika Studios’ The Boxtrolls slipped just 28.1% as it earned $12.4 million and brought its total to $32.5 million.  The dystopian YA drama The Maze Runner now in its third weekend dropped just 31.2% as it brought in $12 million and drove its total to $73.9 million.
 
This weekend’s third newcomer, a remake of the apocalyptic Christian drama Left Behind starring Nicholas Cage, earned just $6.85 million from 1,825 screens for a poor $3,753 per venue average.  In a year in which many Christian-themed films have done well, this remake, which has a ridiculously bad Tomatometer reading of just 2% positive, is yet another bomb from what has become a very bad stretch in Cage’s long, and at times, illustrious, career. 
 
In its tenth frame James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy slipped to #9 as it earned another $3 million bringing its 2014-leading domestic total to $323.4 million.  The film should end up around $330 million.  Meanwhile the Michael Bay-produced live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film slipped to #14 as it earned just $760,000.  It should finish its domestic run with $190 million.
 
Be sure to check back here next week as Legendary Pictures’ horror film Dracula Untold, the Disney family comedy Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible No Good Day, and the Robert Downey, Jr./Robert Duvall dueling actors Oscar-hopeful drama The Judge all open.
 
--Tom Flinn