New entry “American Made” (Universal) and holdovers “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” (20th Century Fox) and “It” (Warner Bros.). are basically tied at the top for weekend box office #1, with estimates placing all within $310,000. Any of the three could emerge on top when Sunday’s actual numbers are compiled after the weekend.
That’s good news for “It” in its fourth weekend (now headed even higher than the $325 million that seemed likely a couple days ago), more mixed for the opening of Tom Cruise’s latest film and the holdover for the expensive second release in the “Kingsman” franchise.
What is not good news is the sudden 20 per cent-plus drop in box office total revenues for the weekend. After three post-Labor Day stanzas where “It” propelled a strong resurgence that gave hope that the mediocre summer’s returns might improve, the current results suggest that the year will end down from 2016 in gross (likely by three per cent or more) with an even larger reduction in actual tickets sold.
“It” returned to #1 (at least in the estimates) after a week at second with “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” taking the top spot last week. That a horror genre film is leading in week four could be unprecedented — even stronger openers usually fall out of the top ten by this point. No matter that it could achieve this in a down weekend. $17 million would be a great second weekend for all but a few films in the genre. But on the fourth weekend? That’s phenomenal.
But “It” can’t single-handedly save the year. Grosses have returned to more business as usual.
The “Kingsman” sequel fell 56 per cent after opening somewhat below expectations (the original dropped 49 per cent off a holiday weekend, then maintained much lower drops to more than triple its initial numbers — “Golden Circle” will struggle to do a 2.5 times multiple). And the openers were not a big help.“American Made” will…
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