Give another ‘W’ to WB.
Our number one movie isn’t Freakier Friday, as everyone would’ve expected a month ago. Instead it’s an R-rated, original horror movie. It’s Sinners all over again, as Weapons was locked and loaded against its competition with an excellent premiere of $42 million. And just like Sinners, this one is pleasing critics and audiences, with an extremely rare-for-the-genre ‘A-‘ CinemaScore. Best go and rush out to this before some annoying person on Twitter spoils it for you, since Weapons coyly played it vague with its marketing.
Incidentally, Weapons has already topped the entire domestic gross of Barbarian (which, as all of the trailers told you, had the same director). That film opened in 2022 when the marketplace was still largely starved for content (more on that in a bit), but gained attention on HBO Max. For Warner Bros., this is yet another victory for them this year, and the list could grow still higher once The Conjuring: Last Rites and Mortal Kombat II come out down the road. He may be cartoonishly evil, but it’s good to be David Zaslav right now.
Coming in lower than initially anticipated is Freakier Friday. Again, I’m wondering if we should call tracking total bullshit, as it was much higher for this one a few weeks ago. Then again, this was apparently originally going to go straight to streaming, so this will become easy money before all is said and done, especially if Jamie Lee Curtis stops attacking movie critics and really just stops talking in general (I love Jamie, but IYKYK). Freakier Friday opened on Wednesday night, and then had full preview screenings on Thursday, so really we are talking about five days when I say it opened to $29 million.
Competing with Freakier Friday for the family crowd is the second weekend of The Bad Guys 2, which sadly isn’t quite showing the legs the original. To clarify, The Bad Guys opened during a very different period for the box office back in 2022, and if you want to know what I mean by that, it stayed in the top ten for ten consecutive weeks. That’s not going to happen in the far healthier climate we have now, and with $43 million in the bank which Mr. Wolf robbed three times so far, no one involved in this is complaining too much, but they aren’t rushing to greenlight The Bad Guys 3 either.
Likewise, The Naked Gun unfortunately isn’t showing the best legs, despite excellent word-of-mouth (seriously, go see this movie!). You could make a case that there are simply too many quality releases vying for the attention of audiences right now (out of the ten films in the top ten this weekend, only Jurassic World Rebirth didn’t fare well with critics, and that has already chomped up $300 million stateside alone). In any case, don’t look for The Naked 2un to be announced anytime soon (remember when Neighbors opened to $50 million in 2014? ScratStitch remembers).
Finally, Sketch isn’t drawing in crowds in tenth place. Kind of a bummer, as even though this is an Angel Studios release (which also apparently doesn’t have anything to do with religion), I’ve heard from many people it’s a great film. They’re going to hope for better profits whenever whatever the hell Zero A.D. is opens this Christmas.
Anyway, the top ten, via The Numbers
