Be warned, for I am about go full cranky old man with this column. Skip ahead to when I talk about The Rock if you’re not in the mood for that.

Our number one “movie” is Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl (that title just rolls off the tongue), which leads the pack with a take of $33 million. Once again, we saw tracking being overly optimistic for something based off of presales alone, as some were claiming this could end up north of $50 million. That was never going to happen for something which–let’s be real–is essentially a glorified YouTube playlist. Fuck it, this is really a commercial for Taylor Swift’s new album, an album which most people going to this will have already bought by the time they sit in their seats with their $20 Taylor Swift popcorn combos (joke’s on them, of course, since Taylor Swift has already announced the real versions of her new songs will be released later on a limited edition album, so you gotta buy it again if you want them!).

You gotta hand it to Taylor Swift (or maybe you don’t, I don’t know). She’s an incredibly shrewd capitalist. She knows how to make money in a way few artists have been able to master. And look, if the fans are happy, that’s cool. I just don’t care about the “beef” rich people have with each other. I don’t care if Taylor felt the need to bring “Blonde Barbie” into one of her new songs. Also, I knew what “mahogany” was ever since I saw The Emperor’s New Groove as a kid. All of these things will only make sense to those who have been swamped with as much Taylor Swift “news” as has been forced upon me this weekend.

Showgirl was a single weekend event which, like 2023’s The Eras Tour, was distributed by AMC. In most theaters, Showgirl has a new showtime starting roughly every half hour. That’s some Avengers: Endgame-level hype which really didn’t seem necessary here, especially since many movies didn’t even play at my theater for the past three days in order to make room for more Taylor Swift showings. But I’m just being grumpy. Maybe I really need to shake it off. Maybe if I actually bought the album, it would be the best thing that’s ever been mine.

Failing to make a knockout is The Smashing Machine, the Oscar-contender featuring Dwayne Johnson with hair which also looks really good. Audiences clearly didn’t agree with me, or they are content waiting for streaming, as this only smashed $6 million. Smash or pass? Pass, apparently. The hierarchy of the awards race, alas, hasn’t changed, and this continued A24’s overall disappointing year at the box office. Bummer.

Elsewhere, we’ve got a lot of re-releases (or “reissues” as the kids call them these days). Avatar: The Way of Water is back on the big screen in 3-D to promote this holiday season’s Fire and Ash, but it lost a lot of its initial PLF showings to Taylor Swift this weekend. It made $3 million, which isn’t much, but also isn’t terrible for a movie everyone saw just three years ago. Casper is also haunting cinemas again, but at my theater, it’s only showing at 8:00 at night. What’s up with that? And hey, the anime cult classic Perfect Blue is also playing! Ultimately, neither Casper nor Blue brought in enough to crack the top ten, although the dog horror movie Good Boy (which also only seems to have late night showings at most theaters) did manage to sneak in there.

Anyway, the top ten, via The Numbers