As expected, Smile 2 climbed to the top of the box office this weekend, with a $23 million tally. The Parker Finn-directed sequel had a slightly higher budget than the 2022 original ($28 million vs. $17 million) and has so far made over $46 million globally. As I said in the column last week, a paradigm shift is in order in moviegoing habits, especially when it comes to horror cinema. It’s a profitable genre, to be sure, but audiences will only flock if it gives them a unique experience.
The Terrifier movies certainly do, and that’s partly why Terrifier 3 is holding out strong with a $9.3 million tally in its second weekend and has already positioned itself as one of the highest-grossing (if not the highest-grossing) independent productions of the year! Again, this was a franchise that built itself naturally, with little to no star power attached to it when it began (though now Chris Jericho is heavily involved).
It’s now become a global phenomenon, just like the Smile movies developed its word of mouth naturally. Many people (myself included) thought the concept felt silly, but audiences’ positive reviews and buzzworthy reactions convinced people to give this original horror movie a chance. As a result, the sequel is doing much better than the first in its opening weekend, and its momentum could be sustained by its second weekend, even if the juggernaut that is Venom: The Last Dance may take a bite out of its earnings next week.
In other movie-related news, We Live in Time is off to a pretty good start in only 985 theatres, with a $4.2 million tally. However, A24’s release strategies have been recently confusing, to say the least. The film was initially slated to release wide on October 11th but changed at the last minute (literally two weeks before its release) and became a New York/Los Angeles exclusive before a wide expansion on October 18th. I have a few friends who were excited to see the film last week, only to crushingly find out that it wouldn’t get a release in our area until this weekend, with little to no information to convey this very important change.
This has unfortunately plagued all of A24’s most significant releases, except for Civil Warwhich benefitted from an IMAX platform. A Different Man had little to no awareness on when it would release in most areas, and the same can be said for Sing Singwhich is allegedly looking up to be positioned as a major awards contender. I certainly hope it is, but the information that this movie indeed exists and is very good was not at all well disseminated by the studio.
In fact, it will be re-released in cinemas for Awards season in the hopes that it gets a push from audiences and voters alike. That’s how bad A24’s release for the movie was. In my opinion, we’re past the need for platform releases, though I also understand why it’s done and how it can shape a film’s success in the awards sphere. However, since I live in an area where it’s so hard to keep track of the local distributors handling A24 releases, I look forward to watching The Brutalist sometime in March of next year (I joke, of course, but I sincerely have no idea when it will hit our screens).
Here is the full list of the top ten films of the weekend:
- Smile 2 (Paramount): $23M – 3,619 theatres
- The Wild Robot (Universal): $10.1M (-28%) – 3,829 theatres
- Terrifier 3 (Iconic Events): $9.3M (-51%) – 2,762 theatres
- Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (Warner Bros): $5.0M (-32%) – 3,251 theatres
- We Live in Time (A24): $4.2M (+1699%) – 985 theatres
- Joker: Folie à Deux (Warner Bros): $2.2M (-69%) – 2,857 theatres
- Piece by Piece (Universal): $2.1M (-45%) – 1,873 theatres
- Transformers One (Paramount): $2.0M (-48%) – 2,169 theatres
- Saturday Night (Sony): $1.8M (-47%) – 2,336 theatres
- The Nightmare Before Christmas (2024 Re-Release) (Disney): $1.1M (-53%) – 1,860 theatres
Source: Comscore
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