Box office: The Conjuring universe rebounds, to a point, with The Nun II

Meanwhile, Barbie lands in 5th place -- its first time outside the weekly top two.

Taissa Farmiga and Storm Reid play nuns, but not “the” Nun, in The Nun II.

Bye-bye, Barbie. The once-invincible doll movie, which was one of the top two films at the box office every week for seven straight weeks, was bumped down to fifth place this week by three sequels and a foreign film, all but one of them brand new.

The top film over the past three days was The Nun II, the ninth movie in the decade-old Conjuring universe. The film opened to an estimated $32.6 million for the weekend, which is kind of middling for the Conjuring franchise but was also the best opening the horror series has had since the original Nun came out five years ago.

The next three spots were held by The Equalizer 2, which earned $12.1 million in its second week (a drop of 65% from last week, raising its total to $61.9 million), and newcomers My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, which earned $10 million over the weekend, and Jawan, an Indian action film that has earned $7.6 million since Thursday.

Barbie, for its part, landed in fifth place with an estimated $5.9 million, raising its total after eight weeks to $620.5 million, while its former chart-mate Oppenheimer landed in eighth place, with an estimated $3 million raising its total to $315.1 million.

Notably, both films continue to perform very well when you compare each weekend of their release to the equivalent weekends of their fellow post-Covid films:

This chart does not depict the figures for Weekends 1 to 5.

A few extra points to note about that chart:

• Barbie, which used to be one of the three or four top films each week, now ranks fifth among post-Covid films in their eighth weeks.

• Barbie, which was once well ahead of Avatar: The Way of Water, is now about $16.5 million behind where that film was at this point in its release.

  • It was $11.75 million behind Avatar last week.

  • Barbie is still slightly ahead of Top Gun: Maverick, but the gap is almost gone.

    • Top Gun was $60 million behind Barbie four weeks ago and $28 million behind two weeks ago. Now it’s only about $2 million behind.

• Oppenheimer previously had the 17th-best first weekend of the post-Covid era, and its second to seventh weekends ranked between seventh-best and 13th-best. Now it has the 11th-best eighth weekend of the post-Covid era.

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