Another weekend, another bloody horror movie at the top of the charts.
Smile 2 earned the horrific honors this time around. In its first weekend, the sequel sank its teeth into an estimated $23 million in North America. That’s just a touch ahead of the $22.6 million the original Smile earned during its own 2022 debut.
Count overseas markets, and we find that Smile 2 doubled its frightful freight—gathering in another $23 million. That pushes its worldwide gross to $46 million.
For the third straight weekend, The Wild Robot locked town a box-office silver medal. The dynamite animated film collected another $10.1 million for that second-place finish. So far, The Wild Robot has earned $101.7 million—the 16th film this year to cross the $100 million mark.
Last week’s champ, Terrifier 3, slipped to third place with $9.3 million. That doesn’t sound like much, but it did push the flick’s earnings to $36.2 million. That’s already more than triple what Terrifier 2 made domestically in 2022 ($11 million), and more than 100 times what the original Terrifier scared up in 2016 ($340,000). Yep, I have a sneaking suspicion that Art the Clown will be hacking away in theaters for years to come.
Speaking of successful sequels, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice added another $5 million to its overstuffed coffins—er, coffers—bringing its total haul to about $284 million. That tally is nearly four times what the original Beetlejuice made in 1988 ($74.7 million). Admittedly, the dollar stretched a lot farther in those ancient of days.
The romantic weeper We Live in Time hopped into the top five this weekend with $4.2 million.
One more film to make note of: Exhibiting Forgiveness—a critically acclaimed R-rated drama—failed to find much of an audience. It earned just under $276,000 to finish 20th.
One Response
One thing I will say about these horror movies is that even though I generally have no interest in them, at least they know how to keep their budget low. I rarely hear about one of them being a box-office bomb.