THE POWER OF THE NUN COMPELS YOU (to go to the cinema and spend some money), Peppermint Garner-s a respectable haul, a film made $187 this weekend, and Other Box Office News.
Note: this article originally ran on Set the Tape (link).
We’ve still got four more days before the release schedule kicks into proper gear again, hence why this week’s article will hopefully be a tad shorter than usual so we can all get out of here sooner, but for once a movie studio decided to capitalise on that fact rather than just leaving dead air and letting the same three films that have been hoovering up the pity dollars for the past month continue to rake in the scraps unchallenged forever. (I mean, what is, the Billboard Hot 100?) Warner Bros., the studio that’s most benefitted from this dead zone allowing the phenomenon of Crazy Rich Asians (suffering its biggest drop to date of 38%) to carry The Meg towards a potential Top 15 Domestic for 2018 finish, kicked off the Fall season early via the latest instalment in the nebulously-defined Conjuring universe. In news that will likely be music to the ears of horror movie executives the world over, this latest spinoff in the series, The Nun by Corin Hardy, has just recorded the biggest opening of the franchise’s history: $53.5 million. That’s not just more than the record-breaking main instalments, that’s more than the rest of this week’s Top 10 combined! Perhaps the work of scary demons manipulating the numbers for nefarious means? Quick, look away from the screen then look back again; that usually draws them out!
Meanwhile, Crazy Rich Asians’ preliminary second place ranking may be in jeopardy from Pierre Morel’s ultra-patriotic ode to White conservative moms the nation over who just don’t trust them Mexicans cos a man with a podium on television said they were all rapists, as Death Wish remake Peppermint outperformed most industry expectations. In fact, oh God, we might actually have another John Wick on our hands, because the Jennifer Garner vehicle’s $13.26 million haul (CRA is currently on $13.6 million) is astoundingly close to that modern classic’s $14.4 million opening. Look, folks, I know that we all liked Jennifer Garner in Alias and that more female-led action movies should be an enforced industry mandate, but couldn’t we maybe have picked a better and not-as-racist film to fling some money at instead? Before anybody steps in to inquire about the “racist” tag, the film’s villains (all Mexican) run their evil drug-dealing operations out of a piñata factory. Really. …are we sure this isn’t a Starship Troopers-type stealth parody?
Elsewhere, faith-based drama God Bless the Broken Road clearly was not blessed enough because it crashed and burned in 11th place with $1.562 million from 1,272 screens. Maybe, just spitballing uneducated advice over here in future, we don’t make movies based off of songs? Not like jukebox musicals, I mean “this entire narrative feature-length movie was based off of one country song.” Again, just a theory, but perhaps this was a doomed idea from the outset? Lenny Abrahamson’s The Little Stranger continues to be done a grave injustice, I assume because it’s not out here for another few weeks, by dropping eighty-three goddamned percent in its sophomore weekend to eke out $65,000 from 477 screens. Finally, for stuff not covered under the purview of the Full List, a brand-new release film made exactly $118 this weekend. The film in question was Thai supernatural horror flick Realms which opened on 3 screens, so the per-screen average was actually even worse than that. Honestly, I feel like I’m making us all point and laugh when in reality this is such an incredible failure that it physically hurts me despite my never having heard of this film before now. Maybe it’s terrible, in fact it probably is, but still… y’know? It’s like watching a diabetic chihuahua with one leg and pinkeye getting run over by a steamroller.
Let’s collectively cleanse our brains of that horrible image by reading through the Full List and agree never to speak of it again.
US Box Office Results: Friday 7th September 2018 – Sunday 9th September 2018
1] The Nun
$53,500,000 / NEW
I shall defer to our very own Gregory Mucci who has a review that should be live right about now for a synopsis: “While evoking the Gothic horror of Hammer films, The Nun never lifts the veil from the genuine scares and heartfelt characters that made the Conjuring films a surefire success.”
He is way better at this than me. Please nobody tell him.
2] Crazy Rich Asians
$13,600,000 / $136,222,165
Kept getting delayed for reasons that you don’t need to know about, but my review of this was finally finished! I don’t think it turned out as well as I would have like for it to, which can be blamed on those aforementioned reasons you don’t need to know about, but it does at least feel good to finally get to use that five-star graphic! Believe it or not, because I know that it may come off otherwise in these particular articles, I prefer it when a film is good.
3] Peppermint
$13,260,000 / NEW
What do you mean, “this isn’t a remake of Death Wish?” …what do you mean, “they actually did remake Death Wish?” Really? “…it was this year?” “…Eli Roth did it?!” I would like to think that I would remember them doing something as stupid and plain bad as that even with everything else that’s gone on in 2018! Hang on… Apparently, I did see this alleged official Death Wish remake and hated it? In April?! How do I not remember this?!
4] The Meg
$6,030,000 / $131,572,774
Thanks to this Hideo Kojima tweet, I found out this week that Jason Statham is in his 50s. Does this look like a man in his 50s to you? I swear that he’s been frozen at 32 since pretty much the day he was born! He came out of the womb looking like Handsome Squidward and hasn’t aged a day since!
5] Searching
$4,515,000 / $14,311,130
This doubled its number of screens to 2,000 this past weekend and only dipped 25% which means that it’s effectively a full-on hit for the type of movie and accompanying expectations it has. I may not like the film all that much, but I’m happy for its success. Anything that can help films that utilise styles such as Screenlife get seen as legitimate formalistic ways to tell a story without being written off as gimmicks is alright by me.
6] Mission: Impossible – Fallout
$3,800,000 / $212,116,767
Officially the highest grossing film of Tom Cruise’s career worldwide, ok? I concede. You’ve won. You’ve all won. I have to keep watching Mission: Impossible movies. You win. Congratulations. I give up asking each and every single one of you to alternately explain the appeal of or shut the heck up about them. You win. YOU WIN.
7] Disney’s Christopher Robin
$3,196,000 / $91,725,090
“I’m lost.” “But I found you.” WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!
8] Operation Finale
$3,043,000 / $14,107,446
Since I got nothing here, here’s a plug for my preview of the London Film Festival programme this year. Gonna be down there covering things from the 8th until the 19th of October, cos I buggered up the days of the press screenings (or they changed the dates at the last minute after I made my reservations OFF TO A GREAT START), so feel free to say “hey” if you’re also there and see me or whatever. However awkward you may assume me to be based on these articles, I assure you that I am much worse in real life.
9] Alpha
$2,505,000 / $32,447,518
Here comes THE BIG DOG!
10] BlacKkKlansman
$1,565,000 / $43,454,530
This could actually be unseated by God Bless the Broken Road once the Actuals come in, given that only $30,000 separates the two movies. If that were to happen, I expect Spike Lee to send many very angry tweets in the direction of Rascal Flats.
Dropped Out: The Happytime Murders, Mile 22
Callie Petch felt good to be out of the rain.
Callie Petch 