Movie Monday: ‘Nun II’ Bests ‘The Expend4bles’ During Slow Weekend

During the quietest movie weekend of the season, The Expend4bles proved to be rather expendable itself.

Despite the presence of Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham and just about every one-time action-movie hero you thought retired, The Expend4bles couldn’t exorcise The Nun II from the top of the box office. America’s favorite satanic sister scared up an estimated $8.4 million in North America, pushing past The Expend4bles by a mere $100,000.

The Nun II has now collected $69.2 million stateside and a truly terrifying $204.2 million worldwide. And it cements The Conjuring universe—the franchise of which The Nun II is a part of—as a still relevant force in the cinematic world. All told, its nine films have earned $807.6 million domestically, making it Hollywood’s most successful horror franchise (if you discount the Twilight franchise and its sparkly vampires, that is). Yep, when you look at lucrative fright-flick brands, the Conjuring films are second to … nun.

Meanwhile, the Expendables franchise seems to be losing steam. The $8.3 million that The Expend4bles took in represents a low-water mark for the brand: The Expendables 3 started its 2014 run with $15.9 million—a franchise low at the time. Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn’t appear in Expend4bles 4, but one of his more famous lines seems vaguely appropriate here: Hasta la vista, baby.

A Haunting in Venice lost more than 55% of its weekend-over-weekend audience and earned $6.3 million to finish third. The Equalizer 3 continues to show some pop, banking $4.7 million for fourth place.

And Barbie is proving to be almost as durable as its namesake doll. The year’s biggest blockbuster continued to pad its stateside totals, adding another $3.2 million to its pink coffers. Barbie has now earned $630.5 million in North America, which makes it the 11^th highest-grossing movie of all time. (It’s trailing No. 10 Jurassic World by about $23 million.) Forget Barbie’s platinum-blond hair: She could build a whole dream house out of the metal at this rate.

It Lives Inside, the only other wide release this weekend besides The Expend4bles, earned $2.6 million to finish seventh—just behind My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 ($3 million) and just in front of Dumb Money ($2.5 million).