Box office: New releases Paw, Saw, Creator, Blind dominate the top five

Meanwhile, Barbie almost drops out of the top ten, and Oppenheimer definitely does.

Four very different new films cracked the top five this week.

An animated kids’ movie, a horror-movie sequel, a sci-fi flick, and a faith-based biopic landed in the top five at the North American box office this week.

The flood of new movies, combined with the expansion of another, almost bumped Barbie out of the top ten after ten weeks of box-office dominance.

The top two films this week—one very kid-oriented, the other definitely not—had notably better openings than the previous movies in their franchises:

• Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie topped the chart this week with $23 million, which was a big step up from the $13.1 million that the first film opened to in 2021.

• Saw X, the tenth film in the popular “torture porn” franchise, landed in second place with $18 million, which was better than the openings for the last two films in the series, Jigsaw (2017, $16.6 million) and Spiral (2021, $8.8 million).

In contrast to the relative box-office successes of Paw and Saw, third place went to The Creator, a sci-fi spectacle that opened to an underwhelming $14 million. Unlike the other new films on the chart this week, which all cost $30 million or less to make, The Creator had a substantial budget, in the $80 million range.

Fifth place went to The Blind, a movie about the early life of Phil Robertson, star of the reality-TV show Duck Dynasty. The film, which has earned almost $5 million since opening on Thursday, was directed by Andrew Hyatt, who may be best-known for his Bible movies Full of Grace (2015) and Paul, Apostle of Christ (2018).

Finally, Dumb Money, the GameStop-themed ensemble movie that has been in limited release for the past two weeks, went into wide release this week and earned another $3.5 million, landing in seventh place and raising its total to $7.3 million.

Partly as a result of all these new and expanded releases, Barbie dropped out of the top five for the first time ever, while Oppenheimer fell well outside of the top ten. Barbie landed in tenth place with $1.4 million, raising its total to $633.1 million, while Oppenheimer grossed an estimated $650,000 and raised its total to $322.5 million.

Also worth noting: Sound of Freedom, the low-budget indie that surprised everyone by outgrossing many would-be blockbusters in North America last summer, has been playing overseas for just over a month now and is on the cusp of passing last year’s Smile ($217.4 million worldwide) to become the top-grossing film worldwide that was either distributed by a streaming service or greenlit as a streaming movie.

And now, a few more stats and facts re: this week’s top ten, title by title: