Weekend Box Office: Barbarian Leads Second Slowest Weekend of 2022

September just keeps getting worse! With the top ten raising just $33.2 million this weekend, it’s the second-lowest weekend gain of 2022 after the weekend of January 28th Spider-Man: No Way Home took first place in its 7th week of release.

The weekend had potential for a breakout hit with the Stephen King adaptation of Salem’s Lot originally slated for release, however, due to Covid-related issues, this film was delayed by several months. Disney (which acquired barbarians Original Studio: 20th Century Fox in 2019) saw a horror-shaped void in the schedule and pounced on it.

This schedule change may actually have paid off barbarian opened better than expected (although our predictions were correct) at $10 million. That may not seem like a huge win, but the film launched with the same stunning range as The invitation at around $7 million, so anything above that is a win. The bad news for this Airbnb horror thriller is that there seems to be a huge rift between the critics and the public of Joe Blow (pun intended) as the film is currently 92% fresh on rotten tomatoes, but only a C+ Cinemascore (a score that measures audience reactions as they leave the theater.) It will be interesting to see how this develops over the coming weeks, as horror films tend to be front-loading, but with a good month and a half to go Halloween could be these decent legs.

In second place comes the Bollywood release of Brahmāstra: Part One – Shiva with an estimated $4.4 million. This is lower than the previous Indian hit release from RRR In March of this year, however, this film was shown on almost 500 more screens. It was a stroke of genius on the part of the studio to stick this film to a date where there’s basically no competition, but with these foreign films, it’s likely that it would have those kinds of numbers no matter when it was released, given that they’re in tend to have their steady audience who will venture into the theater no matter when they are released.

In the rest of the top five, Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise continued to battle for late summer/early fall box office dollars. This week’s fight went to Brad Pitt as his fast train placed 3rd with $3.2 million for a grand total of $92.5 million. To get a little cheesy fast train turns out to be the little film that’s getting closer and closer to the magical $100 million mark.

Tom Cruise wouldn’t be far behind Top Gun: Maverick Raised $3.1 million for the weekend and a running total of $705.6 million. With that small gap between the two films, it’s possible we’ll see a flip-flop when the final numbers are released on Monday.

Rounding out the top 5 DC’s League of Super Pets with $2.8 million and a current domestic total of $85.4 million. This is really good news for the animated film, as it started out a bit weak but had pretty solid legs. I’m not sure if $15 million will hit $100 million domestically, but it’s possible since there doesn’t seem to be a major animated family film until Disney’s strange world on 11/23

To The invitation At number 6 with $2.6 million we get the new faith-based film sign of life with $2.2 million.

If you’d asked me in the early ’90s if Kirk Cameron was a viable box office hit, I probably would have said no, but I bet the guy who played the homeless kid growing pains will be one of the biggest stars of all time. Well, this week Cameron takes the win as his film finishes in the top 10 and DiCaprio doesn’t! These faith-based films are big business and generally have strong opening weekends with big dips in the second week. However, on small budgets, those opening weekends tend to be all these films need.

Rounding out the top ten are leftovers animal with $1.8 million; Minions: The Rise of Gru Continuing his dominance with $1.6 million and the more fun re-release of Spider-Man: No Way Home brings up the rear with $1.3 million.

Next week has the potential for some breakouts with Viola Davis on the front lines The Woman King and very funny looking See how they run with Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan and Adrien Brody opening wide beside X Prequel Movie: Pearl.

Have you been to the cinemas in the last few weeks or have you been waiting for bigger films? Let it know in the comments. And don’t forget to check out our poll asking you what your favorite horror movie has been in the last 5 years.