In honor of National Cinema Day on Saturday, September 3rd, theaters around the country sold tickets for the discounted price of $3. This brought in a 2022 record 8.1 million movie-goers to domestic theaters. Even with the decreased prices, every film this weekend had quite impressive drops.
Coming in first place this weekend is “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” No, this is not December 2021. With the release of the film’s “The More Fun Stuff Version,” fans of the friendly-neighborhood superhero came to theaters in spades, earning the film another $7.6 million. This pushed the film to $812 million domestically and $1.911 billion worldwide. Unfortunately for “No Way Home” it does not appear enough is left in the tank to push the film into the elite company of $2 billion worldwide grossers. “Avatar,” “Avengers: Endgame,” “Avengers: Infinity War,” “Titanic” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” are the only members of that bunch, though perhaps “Avatar: The Way of Water” will join later this year.
In second place this weekend, in its 15th weekend of release, is “Top Gun: Maverick.” With $7 million over the Labor Day weekend, the “Top Gun” sequel usurped $700 million domestically. With the help of National Cinema Day’s decreased tickets and the boost of the holiday, the high-flying feature gained 16.5% since last weekend. This film keeps defying conventional modern box-office logic, putting together a box office run that might not be matched this decade. With September not having any franchise-fare, “Top Gun: Maverick” has a chance to stay in the top 5 until Halloween.
In third place, coming back from the depths of the charts is “DC League of Super Pets” with a surprising $6.97 million this weekend. This is a 31.7% boost from last weekend, making the film climb three spots on the charts. “DC League of Super Pets” was the only PG film in over three thousand theaters this weekend, making it the main choice for family audiences. With families venturing to theaters over the holiday weekend, this is the likely cause of the animated-superhero film’s boost. We will have to watch to see if this boost lasts into next weekend.
In fourth and fifth place were “Bullet Train” and last week’s number one “The Invitation.” The locomotive-based film may have finished in third this weekend, splitting sources due to a tight margin, but grossed around $6.8 million over the 4-day weekend. The film had a negligible drop from last week, being helped by National Cinema Day. “Bullet Train” had a successful weekend, but will need to keep repeating this to get to a $100 million domestic cumulative audience. “The Invitation” grossed $5.75 million over Labor Day weekend, a 30.9% drop from last weekend. With all the other films increasing or dropping virtually zero from the previous weekend, the horror film has a scary result. With more than a 30% drop during National Cinema Day weekend, there is a very low chance “The Invitation” is welcome back in the top 5 next week.
Last week, I predicted “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul” would gross $8 million. Unfortunately, the film was only released in 1800 theaters, and thus only earned $1.75 million over the holiday weekend. Audiences also did not seem to enjoy the film, as it earned a “C-” from CinemaScore. With this result, we can officially chalk this up as a poor prediction.
Next week brings the release of the horror film “Barbarian” as the sole new entrant to theaters. Low-budget horror always tends to do well in its opening weekends, thus I predict this film will earn $5 million as it launches onto the silver screen.
Will “Barbarian” eat up at the box office, or will it be consumed by its competitors?
