Well, it’s no Joker. But still, another R-rated film about a Batman villain has topped the box office.
Clayface—featuring one of the lesser-known members of the Dark Knight’s rogue’s gallery—worked a bit of supervillain panache into what essentially is a body horror flick and molded it into a weekend winner. It earned an estimated $24 million in North America and another $19 million overseas to claim a worldwide gross (and I do mean gross) of $43 million.
That’s not great for your typical superhero movie: When Supergirl, another DC Universe film, opened with $37.1 million this June, it was considered the summer’s biggest bomb. But everything’s relative in the world of moviemaking: Warner Bros. spent perhaps as much as $200 million to make Supergirl, whereas Clayface’s own budget was at most a much-more earthbound $44 million. While marketing costs would have to be tacked on to both of those budgets, Clayface won’t have much more sculpting to do to throw a profit.
In its second week, the documentary You Can See Everything expanded its screen count and upped its box-office take to $19.5 million stateside. That performance was more than enough to hold onto second place. You Can See Everything has now earned $45.1 million in North America, which in just two weekends of work makes it the sixth highest-grossing doc in history, according to Box Office Mojo. And it has yet to open overseas at all.
Laika’s animated film Wildwood surpassed expectations and finished third with $11.6 million. As with You Can See Everything, you can expect that Wildwood will have some pretty substantial legs going forward, too: It currently holds a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, and even a curmudgeonly reviewer at Plugged In (me) was not immune to its charms.
Last week’s champ, Street Fighter, took a titanic 72% weekend-over-weekend tumble, falling from first place all the way to fourth. The film earned just $8.6 million stateside to push its overall domestic haul to $46.9 million. Globally, Street Fighter has earned more than $79.6 million.
Wicker, a curious little romantic satire, became the third new movie to land in the top five. It earned nearly $5.8 million for fifth place.
Another quirky little film, Taika Waititi’s Klara and the Sun, didn’t fare nearly as well. It earned just a touch over $700,000 to land in 14th place. Helen Mirren’s A Talent for Murder also struggled, finishing about $8,000 behind Klara (according to early estimates) to land in 15th place.
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