Box Office Weekend – Second-Highest September Ever Ends
A few more releases have hit the box office, and because of them, September has ended on a high note. Not the highest note, which was 2017 and that largely owed itself to the breakout success of IT, but it came fairly close.
Three new releases of note cracked the Top Twelve: Night School, Smallfoot, and Hell Fest. The $29M Kevin Hart/Tiffany Haddish comedy Night School scored the biggest comedy opening weekend of the year with $28M in spite of negative critical reception, with exit polls suggesting that the comedy appealed to a pretty diverse set of demographics. Smallfoot‘s off to a somewhat small start with $23M against an $80M budget. However, with no major competition on the animated front until November with The Grinch and Ralph Breaks the Internet, the release should get to a point of profitability with good legs domestically and hopefully a better rollout internationally (since it still has yet to open in several big markets overseas). Lastly, Hell Fest opened to a so-so $5M against a $5.5M budget; while that kind of an opening would be fine in a quieter part of the year, this is coming on the verge of several major Autumn releases, including highly-anticipated competition in the form of Halloween.
Meanwhile, Crazy Rich Asians continued to do incredibly well as usual, with it looking incredibly likely that the film will cross $170M domestically by the end of its run. The same could not be said for The Predator, which is dropping like a rock with a near-60% third weekend. Granted, that’s better than the third weekend for Predators, but that movie was made on less than half the budget that the Shane Black horror-action-comedy film was, so they’d better hope that the Chinese box office on the film makes up for the film’s domestic shortcomings.
The Top Twelve box office performances for the three-day weekend can be summarized as follows (bolded titles are new releases):
- Night School (Universal Pictures) – $28M Total.
- Smallfoot (Warner Bros./Warner Animation Group) – $23.02M Total.
- The House with a Clock in Its Walls (Universal Pictures/Amblin Entertainment) – $12.51M Weekend/$44.765M Total; 53% Drop.
- A Simple Favor (Lionsgate) – $6.6M Weekend/$43.066M Total; 35.6% Drop.
- The Nun (Warner Bros./New Line) – $5.435M Weekend/$109.018M Total; 45.5% Drop.
- Hell Fest (CBS Films/Lionsgate) – $5.075M Total.
- Crazy Rich Asians (Warner Bros.) – $4.15M Weekend/$165.681M Total; 34.6% Drop.
- The Predator (20th Century Fox) – $3.7M Weekend/$47.634M Total; 59.7% Drop.
- White Boy Rick (Sony Pictures/Studio 8) – $2.385M Weekend/$21.714M Total; 50.9% Drop.
- Peppermint (STX Entertainment) – $1.77M Weekend/$33.536M Total; 52% Drop.
- Fahrenheit 11/9 (Briarcliff Entertainment) – $1.12M Weekend/$5.19M Total; 62.7% Drop.
- The Meg (Warner Bros.) – $1.025M Weekend/$141.973M Total; 54.8% Drop.
The Meg, Crazy Rich Asians, The Nun, and The Predator are now playing in theaters.
Grant Davis is a freelance writer who has covered entertainment news for more than seven years. His articles have frequently appeared in Star Wars News Net as well as as other entertainment-related websites. As someone who grew up on Star Wars and comic book movies, he’s completely thrilled with the current era of genre entertainment.
