Weekend Box Office: The Woman King takes the top spot

It was another mediocre weekend at the box office, with the top ten taking in just $42.6 million, making it the fourth-worst weekend of 2022.

The Woman King took first place among all newcomers this weekend with an estimated $19 million. If I may blow a horn a bit, this number is consistent with my prediction from Thursday, when tracking opened in the $12 million area. I saw that the reviews were strong and I think people were just intrigued to see Viola Davis in a different kind of role. The stellar reviews helped draw people to the cinemas, while the rare A+ CinemaScore means those who saw it loved it, helping it to above average on Saturday and Sunday! This bodes well for the future of this Maria Bello-produced film.

The well-reviewed horror film Barbarian takes second place in its second week of release. The film had a fairly small second week drop-off of only 40% (generally horror films are preferred and have second week drop-offs in the 60% range) and finished the weekend with 6.3 million U.S. dollar . It seems people are hearing that this isn’t your standard horror thriller and heading to the theaters to see what all the fuss is about. Expect this one to pull in solid numbers throughout the Halloween season.

Third place went to Pearl. The second film in the newly announced trilogy actually landed one place higher than its predecessor in March this year. However, pearl gross is slightly smaller as Pearl opened at $3.1M while X started at $4M. Luckily, these films are made cheaply (this one reportedly costs $1 million), and a $3 million opening already fetches pearl into profitability. The third film in the trilogy Maxxxine is already in production and is expected to be released sometime in 2023.

opening in fourth place see how they run starring Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan with an estimated $3.1 million. This is a film that could have easily dropped onto a streaming service and probably would have been done well, so I give the studio kudos for giving this film a theatrical release, even if the marketing budget wasn’t very strong. The studio seems to know they’re not working with a big award contender, just a fun crime thriller starring some great actors. This is perhaps one of those titles that will quickly fade at the box office but will find new life when it comes to home video as a fun little film with great acting.

Despite completing the above predictions, The Woman King is not holding the weekend’s best average per screen. That honor goes to the David Bowie documentary Moonage Daydream, which was shown on just 170 Imax screens and fetched a staggering average of $7,200 per theater, allowing the film to enjoy 1.2 box office sales this weekend million dollars to crack the top ten. That’s an impressive number and shows that six years after his death, David Bowie is still an icon to be reckoned with.

The rest of the top ten saw the standard tiles we’ve seen over the past few months: fast train Rounding out the top 5 is $2.5 million, which is getting closer and closer to the $100 million mark. While places six through nine were closing Top Gun: Maverick with $2.18 million; DC League of Superbeasts with $2.17 million; The invitation at $1.7 million, although the unrated version of this film is now available upon request, and that might chip away at the PG13 box office a bit; and Minions: The Rise of Gru Closed with $1.3 million.

Next week the highest-grossing film of all time is re-released: Avatar in 3D, Imax 3D and a new 4K High Frame Rate conversion. Personally, I’m not a fan of high frame rates in cinema films unless they’re in 3D, as the HFR helps smooth out some of the 3D effects. Not in 3D, it tends to make movies look a bit more like you shot them with your camcorder than a big budget movie. But we’ll see, James Cameron has earned the benefit of the doubt and I bet he’ll make it look amazing.

The highly controversial film will also be released next week don’t worry darling Directed by Olivia Wilde, starring Florence Pugh, Harry Styles and Chris Pine. It’ll be interesting to see how this one fares at the box office, as the behind-the-scenes drama has far outweighed the news about the actual film, which can be a good thing since most reviews have been less than impressed so far.

Did you go to the cinema this weekend? Let us know in the comments what you’ve seen and if you think we should see it too, and don’t forget to vote in our poll where we ask what your favorite female-fronted action movies are.