Box office report: Madea clobbers Jack Reacher, Moonlight shines in limited release
Keeping up with time-tested tradition, Tyler Perry’s latest installment in the long-running Madea series debuts at the top of the domestic box office, pulling in a stellar estimated $27.6 million across its first three days in wide release.
Boo! A Madea Halloween marks the fourth in Perry’s franchise to launch at the top of the North American chart, the first being 2005’s series kickoff Diary of a Mad Black Woman, which set sail at No. 1 in 2005 with a $21.9 million weekend gross.
Though its three-day total is enough to keep the Tom Cruise action flick Jack Reacher: Never Go Back at bay, Boo!’s $27.6 million registers the Madea series’ third highest-opening (unadjusted for inflation), falling behind both 2009’s Madea Goes to Jail ($41 million) and 2006’s Madea’s Family Reunion ($30 million). Further proving Perry’s ability to speak to a niche audience with targeted content, Boo!, while a critical disappointment, earns a rare A grade on CinemaScore from polled audiences.
While the Jack Reacher sequel settles for a No. 2 finish, its estimated $23 million opening gross is a significant improvement over its forerunner’s $15.2 million start. The film also pushes its per-screen average higher than the original Jack Reacher’s, tallying $6,085 from 3,780 screens as compared to the 2012 flick’s $4,538 per-location average at 3,352 theaters.
The $60 million picture is also the top-grossing film at the global box office, taking in $54 million total ($31 million from international territories), a 28 percent increase from the worldwide haul of the first Jack Reacher movie. Never Go Back attracted mostly older, white males to cinemas this weekend, with 57 percent of moviegoers identifying as male, while 82 percent were over the age of 25. The film nabs a decent B+ grade on CinemaScore on top of negative critical response.
Easily clearing its $9 million production budget at No. 3 is Ouija: Origin of Evil, a horror sequel that continues 2016’s trend of producing inexpensive genre titles that go on to solid critical and financial success. The film rakes in an estimated $14 million from 3,168 theaters for a per-screen average of $4,438. Critics were kind to the prequel on Friday (it stands at 81 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), but audiences weren’t impressed by Sunday’s end: Origin receives a poor C grade on CinemaScore, indicating a sharp drop next weekend is likely.
Ben Affleck’s The Accountant takes a light 43 percent dip to No. 4, adding just over $14 million to its ballooning domestic total, which now hovers around the $50 million mark after 10 days in theaters. The Emily Blunt thriller The Girl on the Train rounds out the top five, making an additional $7.3 million across its third weekend for a North American total of $58.9 million. The week’s fourth new wide release, Keeping Up with the Joneses, manages a paltry $5.6 million from 3,022 theaters in the No. 6 slot.
On the specialty front, A24’s impending Oscar contender Moonlight celebrates one of the best opening weekends of the year so far, averaging $103,685 and selling out in each of its four locations between Friday and Sunday. The film also sits atop the list of the year’s best-reviewed films with a 99 percent score on both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic as of Sunday morning.
Michael Moore in TrumpLand, the director’s surprise documentary about Donald Trump, opened on two screens this week, averaging $25,100 for an estimated $50,200 finish, while Chan-wook Park’s The Handmaiden grosses an impressive $91,600 at five theaters. A restored version of the Jûzô Itami classic Tampopo (originally released in 1985) premiered this weekend, taking in $17,200 from a single location.
Year-to-date box office is up 3.5 percent from the same frame last year.
Check out the Oct. 21-23 weekend box office estimates below.
1. Boo! A Madea Halloween – $27.6 million
2. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back – $23 million
3. Ouija: Origin of Evil – $14 million
4. The Accountant – $14 million
5. The Girl on the Train – $7.3 million
6. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – $6 million
7. Keeping Up with the Joneses – $5.6 million
8. Kevin Hart: What Now? – $4.1 million
9. Storks – $4.1 million
10. Deepwater Horizon – $3.6 million