Weekend Box Office Report: ‘Annabelle: Creation’ Scares Up a Big Opening
We've reached the doldrums of August, where studios release the titles not marketable enough for the summer movie season and not quality enough for award consideration. That means an odd mixture of horror films, formerly prestigious movies that have lost a little bit of their luster, and junk looking for a few screens to dominate for a couple of weeks. Oh, and what do you know? That perfectly describes this weekend's new releases! Gee!
Here's the box office numbers as of Sunday afternoon:
Film | Weekend | Per Screen | ||
1 | Annabelle: Creation | $35,040,000 | $10,006 | $35,040,000 |
2 | Dunkirk | $11,405,000 (-33%) | $3,032 | $153,712,551 |
3 | The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature | $8,934,748 | $2,232 | $8,934,748 |
4 | The Dark Tower | $7,875,000 (-58%) | $2,282 | $34,305,764 |
5 | The Emoji Movie | $6,605,000 (-45%) | $2,052 | $63,591,947 |
6 | Girls Trip | $6,520,500 (-42%) | $2,831 | $97,194,005 |
7 | Spider-Man: Homecoming | $6,100,000 (-31%) | $2,340 | $306,453,694 |
8 | Kidnap | $5,225,000 (-47%) | $2,161 | $19,394,283 |
9 | The Glass Castle | $4,875,000 | $3,337 | $4,875,000 |
10 | Atomic Blonde | $4,572,350 (-43%) | $2,185 | $42,819,575 |
Let’s start with Annabelle: Creation, which opened with $35 million in first place. While it’s technically accurate to say that Annabelle: Creation is the lowest-grossing movie of The Conjuring franchise, the difference is pretty negligible; if anything, each of the movies have opened pretty consistently, grossing between $41 and $35 million in their opening weekends. Considering that Annabelle: Creation has double the RottenTomatoes score of its predecessor — 68% as compared to Annabelle’s 29% — the word of mouth on this one might be enough to push it up around the domestic $100 million mark of both of The Conjuring films. And if not? Heck, Annabelle still made over $250 million worldwide. Would that every movie “disappointed” to this extent.
The second new release of this weekend was The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature, which opened to $8.9 million in third place. That’s less than half of what the original made in its opening weekend in 2014, and with an estimated budget of $40 million, The Nut Job 2 has a bit of a climb ahead of it to break even. And in case you’re wondering why bother making another one, consider this: The Nut Job, despite its terrible reviews, is also the highest-grossing release by distributor Open Road Films, beating out quality competition like Nightcrawler, End of Watch, and The Grey. Guess you can’t fault a smaller distributor for trying to strike it rich a second time, even if it’s with a sequel to a movie nobody seemed to enjoy the first time around.
The final new release of this weekend is The Glass Castle, which opened with $4.8 million in ninth place. Variety had Brie Larson’s latest vehicle opening around the $5 million mark this weekend, so this is actually pretty much on pace with studio expectations, even if the reviews (including our own) have been considerably more mixed than the last time Larson and director Destin Daniel Cretton worked together. If The Glass Castle had been a clearer hit with critics, it’s possible that the movie could’ve gotten the jump start on award season; as it stands, it’s another eventual entry in the popular This Had Oscar Buzz Tumblr.
Digging into the non-new releases, we see that Dunkirk has maintained its grip on second place this weekend, grossing $11.4 million and bringing its domestic gross up above $150 million. We noted last weekend that Dunkirk was outperforming Interstellar at the domestic box office through its first three weekends, and that pattern has held for another weekend as well. We’ll no doubt see an enormous boost for the film’s global gross once it hits theaters in China on September 1. In fourth place is The Dark Tower, which saw a pretty sizable drop down to $7.8 million in its second weekend. With $53 million worldwide, The Dark Tower is about to hit the breakeven point in regards to its budget, but there’s still a lot of room left to grow before the latest Stephen King adaptation hits the black. Watch these numbers closely if you’re still holding out hope for or against a Dark Tower television series.
In fifth place is The Emoji Movie, whose $6.6 million helped it inch closer to $100 million worldwide. I did this last week, and I think I’ll continue to do this until the movie falls off the Top 10 list: instead of providing insight into the success of this film, I’ll just redirect you to our Critics Are Raving video on The Emoji Movie. It doesn’t deserve much more than that. In sixth place this weekend is Girls Trip, which earned $6.5 million and now is less than a week away from crossing the $100 million mark at the domestic box office. Unlike The Emoji Movie, there’s every single reason to root for the success of something like Girls Trip, so here’s to the cast and crew enjoying being — by my napkin math, anyways — the third-cheapest movie of 2017 to crack the $100 million mark, behind only Get Out and Split. That’s pretty fun company for any film to be in.
Seventh place belongs to Spider-Man: Homecoming, which pulled in $6.1 million and continues to solidify the same two narratives we’ve been discussing for weeks: it won’t pass any of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies at the box office, but it should slip past Iron Man and Iron Man 2 before all is said and done. In eighth place is Kidnap, which actually added theaters this weekend en route to a $5.2 million gross. That $19.3 million dollar gross thus far won’t blow anyone away, but hey, there are plenty of movies — A Cure for Wellness, The Space Between Us, The Book of Henry — that would’ve loved to do that well at the box office. Finally, Atomic Blonde rounds out the Top 10 with $4.5 million, bringing its total up to $42 million with domestic audiences. That’s double the film’s budget and right in par with what John Wick did in local theaters, so hopefully that means we haven’t seen the last of Charlize Theron’s Lorraine Broughton.
Oh, and since it’s a little quiet at the box office this weekend, it’s also worth highlighting two high-profile independent films that began their limited releases. Ingrid Goes West, the Neon release starring Aubrey Plaza, landed in three theaters and pulled in $47k per. Meanwhile, Robert Pattinson’s Good Time hit four theaters and grossed $34k per. Both of these movies will likely ramp up their release as long as the numbers hold, so keep an eye out for them at theaters near you.