This weekend, Tyler beat Tom as the comedy Boo! A Madea Halloween held onto the number one spot for a second time leaving the Hanks sequel Inferno to settle for second place with a soft opening. Dropping only 42% from its stellar debut, Madea Halloween kept its box office crown grossing an estimated $16.7M. The Lionsgate hit has banked a superb $52M in ten days of play.
Normally, Perry’s films see sharp second weekend tumbles of 50-60% as the fan base rushes out on the first week. But with the timely Halloween theme, many moviegoers were still interested in spending this final weekend before the pumpkin holiday seeing Madea dish out her patented brand of humor. Even with post-Halloween erosion, Boo! is set to become the second highest grossing film ever in Perry’s directing career behind only 2009’s Madea Goes to Jail which did $90.5M. A final tally just over $70M may result.
Tom Hanks and director Ron Howard failed to pull in much of a crowd for their latest Robert Langdon film Inferno which opened to an estimated $15M from 3,576 locations for a mild $4,195 average. Moviegoer interest was lackluster as the PG-13 pic did not even come close to the results of its two predecessors. The Da Vinci Code bowed to $77.1M in 2006 and 2009’s follow-up Angels & Demons debuted to $46.2M – both in prime mid-May slots in the early part of the summer movie season. Those have stood as the two best live-action openings ever for Hanks, but clearly fans were not excited to revisit that world this time around.
Inferno followed a lengthy seven years later and was adapted from a less popular book. Plus its target audience of mature adults has been bombarded with numerous other star-driven dramas this fall with Inferno being the eighth one in as many weeks. The marketplace just did not need so many. Also impacting the box office this weekend was the World Series having games every night with ratings being the best in a decade.
Reviews were lousy for Inferno which also turned off ticket buyers. The Sony release carries a $75M budget – reasonable for a franchise film anchored by a major star. Overseas markets are being counted on big time here and the global cume is just under $150M already with top markets China and Japan launching this weekend.
More major Hollywood men followed with their latest films. Tom Cruise’s Jack Reacher: Never Go Back tumbled 58% in its second round to an estimated $9.6M for a $39.7M cume for Paramount. Ben Affleck saw his action title The Accountant take in an estimated $8.5M, down 38%, for a $61.3M total for Warner Bros.
Universal saw two films follow with an estimated $7.1M for the horror sequel Ouija: Origin of Evil and an estimated $4.3M for The Girl on the Train. The fright pic declined by a reasonable 50% thanks to Halloween approaching and the crime thriller dipped 40%. Totals are $24.6M and $65.9M.
Fox also had a pair of releases. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children dropped only 33% to an estimated $4M with $79.9M to date as one of the fall season’s top grossers. But the comedy Keeping Up with the Joneses took in an estimated $3.4M, off 38%, and has banked a weak $10.8M to date. The Warner Bros. toon Storks followed with an estimated $2.8M, down just 30%, and $68.2M overall.
The Bollywood film Ae Dil Hai Mushkil opened at number ten with an estimated $2.1M from 302 locations for a solid $7,070 average. The FIP release is only the third foreign language film of 2016 to crack the North American top ten this year.
The top ten films grossed an estimated $73.3M which was up 26% from last year when The Martian stayed number one with $11.7M; but off 2% from 2014 when Ouija remained in the top spot with $10.7M.
Follow Gitesh on Twitter.
