Consider this weekend the calm before the storm.
“Black Adam,” a comic book adventure starring Dwayne Johnson, loomed over box office charts for the third weekend in a row with $18.5 million in North American ticket sales. It was another quiet period at the movies as theater operators eagerly await Marvel’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” which looks to invigorate the lackluster fall box office when it opens on Nov. 11.
After three weeks of release, “Black Adam” has generated $137.3 million in North America and $319 million globally. It’s a solid result, one that improves greatly upon another recent DC entry, 2021’s “The Suicide Squad” (which tapped out with $168 million globally while playing simultaneously on HBO Max in North America) and it’ll soon pass 2019’s Shazam!” (which earned $366 million worldwide). However, the latest Warner Bros. standalone superhero story still has ways to go to justify its massive $195 million production budget.
In second place, a new anime film titled “One Piece Film: Red” collected $9.475 million from 2,367 North American theaters. It’s another modest win for Crunchyroll, a specialty anime label, following recent anime releases like “Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero” ($38 million domestically) and “Jujutsu Kaisen 0: The Movie” ($34 million domestically). Since those films carry relatively small production and marketing budgets, they don’t need to break box office records to rationalize their price tags.
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“Sony-owned Crunchyroll has built a very popular business for their Japanese anime,” says David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research. “It’s impressive.”
“Ticket to Paradise,” a romantic comedy with Julia Roberts and George Clooney, landed at the No. 3 spot with $8.5 million from 4,066 venues, dropping just 14% in its third weekend. The film has generated $46.7 million in North America and looks to continue its crowd-pleasing run through the rest of fall. Despite the challenges facing rom-coms at the box office, “Ticket to Paradise” has managed to defy expectations (thanks, of course, to the combined charm of its stars) with $90.4 million at the international box office and $137 million worldwide. Universal spent $60 million on the movie.
At the No. 4 spot, Paramount’s surprise hit “Smile” generated $4 million from 3,046 cinemas, bringing its domestic tally to $99 million. As the psychological horror film nears the $100 million mark in North America, “Smile” crossed $200 million globally — a stellar tally for a $17 million-budgeted film.
Lionsgate’s supernatural thriller “Prey for the Devil” rounded out the top five with $3.87 million from 2,980 locations, a 48% drop from its debut. Through Sunday, the low-budget film has generated a lackluster $13.64 million.
Outside of the top five, the buzzy slasher film “Terrifier 2″ continued to impress, landing in 10th place with $1.2 million from 1,245 cinemas over the weekend. The independent movie, which is produced by Bloody Disgusting and distributed by Iconic Releasing, is already wildly profitable since it has grossed $9.8 million on its $250,000 budget.
At No. 7, director Martin McDonough’s “The Banshees of Inisherin,” an Irish-set film starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as life-long friends at an impasse, earned $2 million from 895 theaters. As the Searchlight film expands slowly, it has grossed $3 million to date.
In eighth place, “Till” stayed steady with $1.875 million from 2,136 screens. The emotional biopic, featuring Danielle Deadwyler as the mother of Emmett Till, has generated $6.5 million after four weeks of release, a decent result for a drama aimed at adult audiences.
Another specialty title, James Grey’s semi-autobiographical “Armageddon Time,” struggled to break out as it expanded to 1,006 venues. The Focus Features film, starring Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong, brought back $810,000 — translating to a bleak $802 per location. So far, “Armageddon Time” has generated $902,000.
Overall, the box office brought in a sluggish $59.4 million over the weekend, according to Comscore. Even with the surprise success of “Smile” and better-than-expected turnouts for “Black Adam” and “Ticket to Paradise,” movie theater owners are needing a blockbuster (or two) to carry them through the winter. “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” the sequel to the billion-dollar smash, should deliver on the goods, with box office experts predicting an opening weekend between $175 million and $200 million.
“Next weekend,” Franchise Entertainment Research’s Gross says, “business returns to world-class form with the opening of ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.'”
