NEW YORK — This weekend’s film choices included Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker, a film about Donald Trumpan original story from “Saturday Night Live” and even Pharrell Williams in Lego. In the end, everyone was beaten up by an axe-wielding clown.
“Terrifier 3,” a bloody, low-budget slasher from small distributor Cineverse, topped the weekend box office with $18.3 million, according to Sunday estimates. The film, a sequel to 2022’s “Terrifier 2” ($15 million in worldwide ticket sales), brings back murderous Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) and lets him loose, in the guise of Santa Claus, during a Christmas party.
That “Terrifier 3” was able to vastly exceed expectations and outperform both major studios and awards contenders was only possible thanks to the disaster of “Joker: Folie à Deux.” After Todd Phillips’ “Joker” sequel, starring Phoenix and Lady Gaga, got off to a very small start last weekend (and a “D” CinemaScore from audiences), the Warner Bros. release. dropped 81% in its second weekend. , grossing just $7.1 million.
For a superhero film, such a drop is unprecedented. Disappointments like “The Marvels,” “The Flash” and “Shazam Fury of the Gods” all fared better in the second weekend. Such massive rejection from audiences and critics is particularly unusual for a sequel to a huge hit like 2019’s “Joker.” That film, also directed by Phillips and Phoenix, grossed more than $1 billion in the world against a budget of 60 million dollars.
The sequel was more expensive, costing around $200 million. This means that “Joker: Folie à Deux” is headed for certain disaster at the box office. Worldwide, it collected $165.3 million in ticket sales.
“This is an outlier weekend if ever there was one,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “If you asked someone a month or even a week ago, would ‘Terrify 3’ be the number one movie among all these big studio films and award contenders? Having a movie like this just shows you that the audience is the ultimate arbiter of what wins at the box office.
The “Joker” slide authorized “The Wild Robot” the popular Universal Pictures and DreamWorks animated film, which will take second place in its third weekend with $13.4 million. Strong reviews for Chris Sanders’ adaptation of Peter Brown’s book led the film, with Lupita Nyong’o voicing the robot protagonist, to $83.7 million domestically and $148 million worldwide.
Donald Trump’s young film “The Apprentice,” distributed by Briarcliff Entertainment to 1,740 theaters, opened in a distant 10th place, with a paltry $1.6 million in ticket sales. Even though expectations weren’t much higher, the public still showed little enthusiasm for the Republican candidate’s election-year story.
If headlines translated into ticket sales, Ali Abbasi’s film could have done better. “The Apprentice” with Sebastian Stan as Trump under the mentorship of Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong)has been in the news since his debut at the Cannes Film Festival, until its last-minute publication just weeks before the election. THE The Trump campaign called the film “Electoral interference by Hollywood elites”.
Abbasi’s film, set in the 1970s and 1980s, tests moviegoers’ appetite for a political film in an election year. Major studios and specialty labels have held off on acquiring it in part because of questions about whether a film about Trump would turn off liberal and conservative moviegoers. “The Apprentice” will depend on continued awards discussions for Strong and Stan to make a significant mark in theaters before voters go to the polls.
Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night” failed to spark its nationwide expansion. The film, with a cast led by Gabriel LaBelle’s Lorne Michaels, collected $3.4 million from 2,288 locations. The Sony Pictures release, about the behind-the-scenes drama as the NBC sketch comedy show is about to premiere in 1975, will likely need more traction with audiences to carry it well into awards season.
“Piece by Piece,” a Pharrell Williams documentary-biopic hybrid brought to life in Lego form, also hoped to better appeal to moviegoers. The acclaimed Focus Features film, directed by veteran documentarian Morgan Neville (“20 Feet From Stardom,” “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”), opened with $3.8 million from 1,865 theaters.
But the debut of “Piece By Piece,” while low for an animated Lego film, was very high for a documentary. “Piece By Piece,” which earned the highest CinemaScore of the weekend, an “A” from audiences, could play well for weeks to come. The film, which had a modest budget ($16 million), is also expected to become the highest-grossing documentary of the year – if you can call “Piece by Piece” that.
“We live in time” the crying drama with Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield, had one of the best per-theater averages of the year when it premiered on five screens. The A24 version, which goes nationwide next weekend, debuted with $255,911 and a per-screen average of $51,000.
Apart from the success of Warner Bros. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (which grossed $7.1 million in its six weekends of release despite its recent release on video-on-demand), Hollywood’s downfall is struggling to get going. Low-budget horror, like “Terrifier 3,” continues to be a good option in theaters, but this fall was mainly marked by bombs like “Joker: Folie à Deux” and “Megalopolis.”
This time last year, Taylor Swift was give a huge boost to the box office with “The Eras Tour”. This weekend compared to the same period last year, it was down 45% according to Comscore.
Estimated ticket sales Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final national figures will be released on Monday.
1. “Terrify 3,” $18.3 million.
2. “The Wild Robot,” $13.5 million.
3. “Joker: Folie à Deux,” $7.1 million.
4. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” $7.1 million.
5. “Piece by Piece,” $3.8 million.
6. “Transformers One,” $3.7 million.
7. “Saturday Night,” $3.4 million.
8. “My Hero Academia: You’re Next,” $3 million.
9. “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” $2.3 million.
10. “The Apprentice,” $1.6 million.
