"Smile 2" Opens at #1

[JamesG]

Smile 2 Leads Box Office with $23 Million Debut, A24’s We Live in Time Cracks Top Five
by Rebecca Rubin
Oct. 20, 2024


Smile 2 has carved out a decent $23 million in its opening weekend, easily topping the otherwise sleepy North American box office charts.

The R-rated sequel to Paramount creepy psychological thriller Smile debuted on par with expectations and even with the original film, which opened to $22.6 million in 2022. That movie, which was commissioned for streaming before pivoting to a theatrical release, became a sleeper hit with $105 million domestically and $217 million globally.



It has been well-received by audiences, earning a “B” grade on CinemaScore and improving from the first film’s “B-” mark.

The follow-up film also opened overseas with $23 million for a global start of $46 million.






A24’s weepy romantic drama We Live in Time debuted impressively in fifth place with $4.1 million from only 955 theaters.

The film, starring Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh as a young couple in unenviable circumstances, has grossed $4.5 million to date after playing for one weekend in limited release. Young women were the primary ticket buyers, of which 85% were under 35 and 70% were female.






Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or-winning Anora, has collected $540,000 from just six theaters in Los Angeles and New York City. That translates to $90,000 per location, ranking as the best screen average — the key metric for platform releases — of the year, according to its distributor, Neon.

It also scored the second-highest screen average of the post-pandemic era, behind Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, and among the top five of the last half-decade alongside Parasite, Uncut Gems and The Favourite.

The film, a comic look at an exotic dancer and sex worker who marries the son of a Russian oligarch, will continue to expand its footprint through the fall and looks to find itself in the awards race.






Joker: Folie à Deux plunged to the No. 6 spot in its third weekend of release, collecting $2.18 million from 2,857 venues. The follow-up to 2019’s billion-dollar hit Joker has turned into a box office disaster with $56.4 million domestically and $192 million globally after three weekends on the big screen.

By comparison, the original Joker had generated $96.2 million domestically and $248.4 million globally in its opening weekend. The $200 million-budgeted Warner Bros. sequel won’t get anywhere near those revenues by the time it leaves theaters.






Beetlejuice Beetlejuice landed in fourth place with $5 million from 3,251 locations.

Tim Burton’s sequel has remained in the top five on domestic charts for seven consecutive weekends and has grossed a solid $283 million in North America and $434.6 million globally to date.






Universal and DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot remained in second place with $10 million in its fourth weekend of release.

So far, the well-reviewed family film has amassed $101.7 million domestically and $196 million worldwide.






Terrifier 3, which was last weekend’s surprise winner, added $9.1 million in its sophomore outing, a 52% decline from its debut. The ultra-gory, low-budget slasher film has generated $36 million in total.

The third Terrifier installment — each one about the demonic Art the Clown who brutalizes a small town — has already surpassed the entire global haul of its predecessor, 2022’s Terrifier 2 which earned $10 million domestically and $15.7 million globally.

https://variety.com/2024/film/box-of...es-1236183702/






October 18-20, 2024: Weekend Studio Estimates

1. Smile 2 $23,000,000
2. The Wild Robot $10,100,000 / $101,717,115
3. Terrifier 3 $9,307,882 / $36,215,033
4. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice $5,000,000 / $283,973,139
5. We Live in Time $4,506,030
6. Joker: Folie à Deux $2,180,000 / $56,442,948
7. Piece by Piece $2,100,000 / $7,601,985
8. Transformers One $1,965,000 / $56,634,862
9. Saturday Night $1,800,000 / $7,631,923
10. The Nightmare Before Christmas (2024 Re-Release) $1,129,000 / $4,816,434