Paramount and Temple Hill are all smiles.
Their new film, Smile 2, won the domestic box office race with an estimated $23 million in 3,619 theaters, including Imax and other premium large screens. That way, the film’s debut will be the sleeper hit Smile, which was released in late September 2022 to $22.6 million and grossed more than $217 million worldwide against a $17 million budget. It will be a little earlier than the first movie.
Internationally, the sequel made $23 million as well.
Writer and director Parker Finn returns, and the sequel depicts an evil spirit that makes audiences jump with its diabolical grin, this time infecting a troubled pop star (Naomi Scott) and causing her enormous The Hollywood Reporter has a review of the movie that says it feeds off of trauma. . Scott will star opposite Lucas Gage, Rosemarie DeWitt, and Miles Gutierrez-Reilly. The budget for the sequel was $28 million, still a modest amount for a major studio film.
Smile 2 received a B CinemaScore from audiences, compared to a B for the first film. It also had to fend off competition from the holdover slasher “Terrifier 3,” which opened last weekend with $18.9 million despite no ratings and zero TV ads.
Cineverse’s “Terrifier 3” came in third place this weekend, earning a solid showing of just over $9 million in 2,762 theaters and grossing around $36 million domestically on a production budget of $2 million. It became.
Some have speculated that DreamWorks/Universal’s The Wild Robots may be benefiting from Terrifier 3, because theaters will not allow anyone under 17 to watch Terrifier without an adult. Because I can’t get people to watch Fire 3. (The seller is treating it like an R-rated movie.) Rival studios suspect that teenagers are buying tickets to see Wild Robot and sneaking into Terrifire 3. (The same may apply to the R-rated Smile 2).
In any case, Wild Robot, which is available to watch at home via premium VOD, has surpassed the $100 million domestic mark in its fourth week of release after earning an additional $10 million in 3,829 theaters domestically. I am proud to have maintained my second place in the competition. $101.7 million through Sunday, $196 million worldwide.
Director John Crowley’s romantic drama We Live in Time opened in just a handful of cities last weekend, successfully playing in 985 theaters and climbing the charts to No. 5. It became news. Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh earned $4.2 million from 985 locations. A24 is expanding We Live in Time everywhere next weekend.
The big headliner at the awards box office was director Sean Baker’s “Anora,” which opened in six locations in New York and Los Angeles. The neon classic is about a sex worker who falls in love with the son of a Russian oligarch. This feature won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
“Anora” has an estimated average gross of $90,000 per theater, making it the highest-grossing film since last year’s Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City” and in the top five of the past five years. .
“Baker is a unique director who truly understands the power of the theatrical experience and how important it is for movies to be seen in theaters. Mikey Madison’s unparalleled performance as Anora and the film’s powerful With our award potential, we have no doubt that we will continue to attract a wide audience into the fall,” said Neon Distribution Director Elissa Federoff.
Last weekend, a handful of Oscar contenders, including Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night,” fared poorly when they opted for national and platform releases. The Donald Trump biopic “The Apprentice” fell outside the top 10 in its second week of release.
Oct. 20, 8:00 a.m.: Updated with revised estimates.
This article was originally published on October 20th at 9:35am
