Box office: Forrest Gump reunion flops, Venom holds, Wild Robot surges
Here, which reunites the director and co-stars of Forrest Gump, was the only new wide release from a major studio this week, and it had one of the worst openings of its creators' careers.
A few of this week’s highlights:
Venom: The Last Dance had one of the stronger holds of any Spidey-adjacent film, though it did start from a softer-than-expected opening last week.
The Wild Robot not only had a strong hold, it actually did better this week than last week, despite being available online for the past few weeks.
Here—which reunites the director and co-stars of Forrest Gump—had one of the worst openings of its creators’ careers.
Two Indian franchise films—Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 and Singham Again—came out for Diwali and cracked the North American top ten.
Total theatrical revenue was an estimated $74 million, making this one of the twelve worst weekends of the year so far (the seven worst weekends were all between January and April), and the eighth weekend in a row that failed to crack $100 million.
The lack of revenue was due, in part, to a lack of product (Here was the only new wide release from a major studio this week), and some have speculated that the lack of product was due, in turn, to studio trepidation about releasing new films so close to the American election. (Will people be in the mood to go to the movies…?)
This got me wondering if studios have always been so trepidatious, and what the big new releases were in the weekends before the last few presidential elections.
This is what I found (counting films that opened in / expanded to 1,000+ theatres):
2020 (the Covid year, when many theatres were shut down): Come Play.
2016: Doctor Strange, Trolls, Hacksaw Ridge.
2012: Wreck-It Ralph, Flight, The Man with the Iron Fists.
2008: Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Changeling, The Haunting of Molly Hartley.
2004: Ray, Saw.
2000: Charlie’s Angels, The Legend of Bagger Vance.
1996: William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, Larger than Life, Dear God.
And now, a few more stats and facts re: this week’s top ten, title by title:
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