Weekend Box Office Report: ‘It’ Breaks a Whole Slew of Box Office Records
As we head deeper into September, two things have become pretty clear about 2017 box office numbers: one, Hollywood desperately needs to bounce back a little bit from the doldrums of August, and two, whoever decided to hedge their studio’s bets with a September release date for a movie about a killer clown is looking like a [profanity] genius right about now. We’ll get to all of that in a moment, but first, here are the box office numbers as of Sunday afternoon:
Film | Weekend | Per Screen | ||
1 | It | $117,150,000 | $28,552 | $117,150,000 |
2 | Home Again | $9,028,222 | $3,071 | $9,028,222 |
3 | The Hitman’s Bodyguard | $4,850,000 (-54%) | $1,460 | $64,897,007 |
4 | Annabelle: Creation | $4,000,000 (-46%) | $1,332 | $96,267,010 |
5 | Wind River | $3,210,200 (-48%) | $1,111 | $25,002,192 |
6 | Leap! | $2,500,100 (-48%) | $929 | $15,874,536 |
7 | Spider-Man: Homecoming | $2,015,000 (-45%) | $1,216 | $327,702,794 |
8 | Dunkirk | $1,950,000 (-55%) | $924 | $183,110,279 |
9 | Logan Lucky | $1,826,425 (-58%) | $843 | $25,228,666 |
10 | The Emoji Movie | $1,060,000 (-57%) | $731 | $82,516,858 |
Let’s start at the top. The easiest way to contextualize It’s $117 million opening weekend is to just rattle off a list of its accomplishments, so that’s exactly what we’re going to do. First, there’s the fact that It broke Deadpool‘s Thursday night record for an R-Rated movie. Then there’s the fact that It nearly tripled the combined box office gross of the next 57 movies (that's five-seven movies) on the box office charts this weekend. There’s also the fact that It was projected by Variety — as recently as two days ago, mind you — to make anywhere between $65 and $75 million dollars in its opening weekend, and that was already being regarded as a major coup for the studio. As noted by Box Office Mojo, It is also the biggest September opening of all time, the biggest horror opening of all time, and — with only four days in the books — the second-highest grossing Stephen King movie ever (by unadjusted gross). Heck, It has already matched the entire theatrical run of Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver, a movie that was made for the exact same budget. There’s success, there’s success beyond your wildest dreams, and then — a good dozen steps past even that — there’s the critical and commercial response to It. Great to see a horror movie make good.
In second place this week — finishing over $100 million behind It, if you can believe it — is the Reese Witherspoon vehicle Home Again with $9 million. This is just shy of the earlier projections of $10 million from Variety and a solid performance for a film that only cost an estimated $15 million to make. Witherspoon’s been a bit hard to pin down in recent years, moving between action-comedies, uplifting dramas, and animated movies; Home Again will serve as proof for some studio executives that she’s still a box office draw and deserving of a closer look for future roles. It’s also good to see strong box office numbers by a woman making her directorial debut. Even if Home Again isn’t your personal cup of tea, the success of Hallie Meyers-Shyer’s film is a good look for the business.
The rest of the films in the Top 10 should be extremely familiar by this point — we’ve spent weeks stuck in a holding pattern with these movies — so let’s do our best to get through them pretty quickly. In third place with $4.8 million is The Hitman’s Bodyguard, which has now grossed just about $65 million dollars with domestic audiences. It enjoyed its run as the highest-grossing movie in America for a couple of weeks, but with actual competition in place now, The Hitman’s Bodyguard will probably slip off the Top 10 list fairly quickly. In fourth place with $4 million is Annabelle: Creation, which is now only days away from hitting the $100 million mark with domestic audiences. At this rate, Annabelle: Creation should also pass The Conjuring 2 at $102.4 million to become the second-highest grossing movie in The Conjuring cinematic universe. In a year where it became fashionable to wonder about a post-horror Hollywood, demon dolls and evil clowns are still proving that the classics work.
In fifth place is Wind River, which actually expanded into more theaters for its sixth consecutive weekend and grossed $3.2 million in the process. Hell or High Water made $27 million at the domestic box office and muscled its way into the Oscar picture as a stealth Best Picture nominee; the critical and commercial success of Wind River does make one wonder if the same can be said of Taylor Sheridan’s directorial debut. In sixth place is Leap! with $2.5 million. While the animated movie hasn’t really caught on with domestic audiences, it’s worth remembering that Leap! has made $98.9 million worldwide, so reports of its demise have been greatly exaggerated. It’s been a success everywhere but here.
In seventh place is Spider-Man: Homecoming, which grossed $2 million and managed to stay in the Top 10 for an impressive eleventh straight weekend (and six straight weekend in seventh place, specifically). Due to its unexpected longevity, Spider-Man: Homecoming is now less than $10 million away from catching Spider-Man 3 on the list of best Spider-Movies, but the writing seems to be on the wall for the Marvel movie. Guess they’ll just have to console themselves with that $823 million worldwide gross. In eighth place with $1.9 million is Dunkirk, and since this has been my barometer throughout its theatrical run, we’ll do it again, possibly for the last time: is Dunkirk keeping pace with Interstellar? $183 million through Week 8 vs. $177 million through Week 8? It looks like Dunkirk is pulling into the lead!
In ninth place this weekend is Logan Lucky, which earned $1.8 million and now has made $25 million at the box office. Not an especially strong showing for a Steven Soderbergh film with A-List talent — especially considering it dropped over 800 theaters this weekend and should be out of theaters in just a few weeks — but hopefully it won’t discourage the director for moving forward with his new distribution model. And finally, rounding out the 10th spot with just north of $1 million dollars is The Emoji Movie, which means it’s time for me to link our Critics Are Raving piece one last time. May you spend eternity in The Bad Place, you monstrosity of a movie.