Halloween weekend is always a slow time for theaters. And with October 31 falling mid-week, this weekend, though a few days early, served as the time when people went to costume parties and many families did their trick-or-treat festivities. This means, studios smartly stayed away from debuting anything big, leading to Warner Bros.’ “Joker” once again taking the top spot at the box office.
In its fourth weekend, “Joker” reclaimed the top spot from Disney’s “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” and scored an $18.9 million frame. That brings the comic book film’s domestic total up to a whopping $278 million. In doing so, the R-rated film jumped past “The Hangover” for the #10 R-rated film of all time domestically. Now, globally, “Joker” scored another incredible weekend, bringing its worldwide total up to $849 million, the biggest ever for an R-rated film and the fifth-biggest DC comic book film of all time, only trailing “Aquaman” ($1.15 billion), “The Dark Knight Rises” ($1.08 billion), “The Dark Knight” ($1 billion), and “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” ($874 million).
Clearly, after everything is all said and done, “Joker” will surpass ‘BvS’ and will likely flirt with $1 billion worldwide. And if it does pass $1 billion, we could be looking at the Todd Phillips’ film beating Christopher Nolan’s highest-grossing Batman films. As for other previous DC films, “Joker” just passed “Wonder Woman” ($822 million) on the global box office list.
Even though this is historically not a great weekend for brand-new films, studios did debut some movies, including the weekend’s new horror film “Countdown.” STX Films’ low-budget, high-concept film about an app that predicts exactly when someone will die defied the terrible reviews and debuted in the #5 spot with a solid $9 million. Normally, this wouldn’t be viewed as a big win for a new film, but with a reported budget of only $6.5 million, “Countdown” didn’t have to do insanely well to turn a profit.
Other new releases include Screen Gems’ cop thriller “Black and Blue,” starring Naomie Harris. That film didn’t have a huge amount of buzz coming into its opening weekend and only debuted in the #6 slot with $8.3 million. Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s “director’s cut” of “The Current War” also debuted this weekend, in just over 1,000 screens, but didn’t have a ton of paying customers, only bringing in an estimated $2.7 million.
And while it wasn’t technically the opening weekend for Robert Eggers’ “The Lighthouse,” this weekend saw the Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe film expand to almost 600 screens and score a #8 showing and $3.1 million. This is a pretty solid expansion for the auteur’s film and depending on how well word-of-mouth continues, we could be looking at another modest indie hit for Eggers, after his debut, “The Witch.”
On the limited release side of the business, perhaps the biggest film of the weekend was the much-hyped launch of Kanye West’s “Jesus is King” album/film experience. The Gospel-influenced album also debuted with an IMAX film presentation that screened in 372 theaters and earned an estimated $830,000 over the three days. This isn’t a massive opening, by any stretch, but for a late-announced, not-quite-a-concert-doc film, West can’t be too upset. It’ll be interesting to see if “Jesus is King” continues to find an audience in the weeks to come, as the album doesn’t seem to have the same enthusiasm surrounding it as with the rapper’s previous efforts.
The final highly-anticipated limited release debut this weekend was Ira Sachs’ family drama, “Frankie,” which sports an all-star cast led by the incredible Isabelle Huppert. Coming off a mixed-reception from this year’s Cannes, “Frankie” didn’t have the buzz that recent debuts like “The Lighthouse” or “Pain & Glory” have, meaning that really the people who are anxiously anticipating Sachs’ latest are the pure cinephiles. That left “Frankie” with a modest $5,735 per-theater-average on only 4 locations. Sony Pictures Classics likely wanted something much higher and will cautiously expand the film in the coming weeks.
If you had trouble finding reasons to venture out to your local multiplex this weekend, then next weekend has you covered. Opening wide are “Terminator: Dark Fate,” “Harriet,” “Artic Dogs,” and “Motherless Brooklyn,” covering the genre gamut of big-budget, action/sci-fi, historical biopic, children’s animation, and prestige drama with awards aspirations. Hopefully, this gives us something more than “Joker” to discuss!
Here’s the entire domestic top 10 for October 25 to October 27:
1. Joker – $18.9M ($278M Overall)
2. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil – $18.5M ($65M)
3. The Addams Family – $11.7M ($73M)
4. Zombieland: Double Tap – $11.6M ($47M)
5. Countdown – $9M (Debut)
6. Black & Blue – $8.3M (Debut)
7. Gemini Man – $4M ($43M)
8. The Lighthouse – $3.1M ($3.6M)
9. The Current War: Director’s Cut – $2.6M (Debut)
10. Abominable – $2M ($57M)
