While indie slasher pic “Terrifier 3” easily wins a weekend of curiosity and carnage at the domestic box office, “Joker: Folie à Deux” suffers the worst drop ever for a comic book movie. This makes it one of the largest of all films.
Cineverse and Icon Events’ Terrifier threequel opened in the $16 million to $17 million range in 1,988 theaters and is on track to take first place.
The next closest movie is Wild Robot, which continues to shine at DreamWorks Animation and Universal. Now in its third weekend, the family picture is on track to earn an additional $13.9 million from 3,854 theaters.
Warner Bros.’ Holdover Beetlejuice Beetlejuice also continues to demonstrate its theatrical power, even though it’s now available for home viewing on premium VOD. The Tim Burton-directed sequel topped $275 million domestically in its sixth weekend and came in third with an estimated $7.2 million to $7.4 million from 2,408 locations.
Beetlejuice “Beetlejuice” even outperformed Todd Phillips’ “Joker” sequel, which fell off a cliff with its second film, earning a historic 82 percent box office gross with an estimated $6.6 million to $6.8 million from 4,102 theaters. This is a sharp decline. Previously, “Marvels” held the worst record among comic book movies with a 78% second-weekend box office gross.
While Terriifier 3 has been a huge success in its debut, a number of other new national openings, including high-profile awards contenders, have struggled to find an audience.
The Donald Trump movie The Apprentice, directed by Briarcliff (which Trump tried to block from being shown in theaters), is expected to gross in the $1.5 million range at 1,740 theaters. This puts it in a close battle for 10th place with holdover Speak No Evil (though rival studios have indicated the latter has the upper hand). Pre-release tracking indicated the picture’s opening price was in the $3 million range.
The Apprentice, which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and later screened at the Telluride Film Festival, does much of its business in the liberal enclaves of New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. Viewers gave it a B-CinemaScore, but it boasts decent reviews.
Briarcliff, which acquired the U.S. rights to the film at the 11th hour, has only five weeks left to sell The Apprentice, and The Apprentice has launched a Kickstarter campaign to help raise money for marketing costs. started. Tom Ortenberg, head of Briarcliff, which produced Best Picture winner “Spotlight,” believes “The Apprentice” has been steadily growing and that the opening box office receipts won’t determine the film’s fate.
Before the pandemic, indie distributors typically released award-nominated films in New York and Los Angeles to garner word of mouth, but if they opened nationally and the films didn’t draw crowds, they risked losing theaters quickly. Platform releases are becoming less common.
Focus Features also announced the nationwide release of “Piece by Piece,” the acclaimed Oscar-nominated animated bibliographical documentary about Pharrell Williams. The film earned a stellar A on CinemaScore and is expected to open in 1,865 theaters this weekend, grossing $3.5 million and finishing in sixth place. That’s not bad for a documentary.
“Piece by Piece,” made in collaboration with Lego, is based on another award contender, Jason Reitman’s narrative feature “Saturday Night” (Lorne Michaels’ “Saturday Night Live” feature). Love Letter) is in a close battle. The film was also shown at Telluride, which is considered ground zero for launching an Oscar campaign.
Sony’s “Saturday Night” is expanding widely after airing its first two weekends in select cities like Los Angeles and New York. The generally well-reviewed film has a modest weekend box office estimate of $3.5 million in 2,309 theaters after earning a B+ CinemaScore.
Like Briarcliff, Sony believes “Saturday Night” will go even further.
After five consecutive weekends of growth, this weekend’s box office revenue is expected to be down 45 percent from the same slot last year. The overall software market isn’t helping, although the main factor is the failure of Joker: Folie à Deux.
Numbers will be updated Sunday morning.
