Box Office Discussion: Top "Ten"

 Shang-Chi becomes the highest-grossing film of 2021, while Dear Evan Hanson gets returned to sender.

Another week, another win for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which won its fourth straight weekend with $13 million.  It becomes the first film since The Croods: A New Age to top the box office for four weekends, and the first since Tenet to top it for four straight weekends.  That dominance of September has led to a total gross of $196.2 million, putting Shang-Chi well ahead of Black Widow to become 2021's highest grosser to date.  By the end of the upcoming weekend, it should be well above $200 million.

Not putting up much of a fight in second is Dear Evan Hanson.  The Ben Platt-starring musical could only wave through a window at Shang-Chi, finding only $7.4 million, coming in below even modest expectations.  It looked like 2021 might be the year of the musical, but with both this and In the Heights flopping, and Annette, Everybody's Talking About Jamie, and Cinderella shuttled off to streaming and already largely being forgotten, you have to think that Disney is getting at least mildly concerned with West Side Story at Christmas.

Free Guy continues its excellent showing in third, adding another $4.1 million to its steadily growing total.  It is up to $114.2 million, and could easily add another $20 million or so before its game over.  Candyman is also having a sweet run, as the horror thriller picked up $2.6 million for a total of $56.9 million, heading for a final gross over $60 million.

As expected, HBO Max took the legs right out from under Cry Macho, as the Eastwood drama could only come up with $2.1 million in its second weekend.  Its ten-day stands at a dismal $8.3 million.  With the very expensive Dune coming up in only a few weeks, WB officials have to hope that the films visuals will prompt its subscriber base off their couches and into theaters.

Jungle Cruise continues to chug along, picking up another $1.7 million for a total of $114.9 million, a bit of a disappointment given the grosses of Shang-Chi, but then again, Shang-Chi was a theatrical exclusive.  Another film ruined by HBO Max, Malignant, brought in $1.5 million for a gross of $12.3 million.  Despite solid reviews, Copshop didn't find much in the way of new moviegoers in its second weekend, taking in $1.3 million for a ten-day total of $4.5 million.  Paw Patrol found another $1.2 million for a decent gross of $38.8 million.

Opening in tenth was the Indian romantic melodrama Love Story, which despite playing on only 300 screens, was able to pull in $1 million.  It also kept The Eyes of Tammy Faye, which is looking like the biggest flop of September, out of the Top 10.  Opening way down the list was the tenth anniversary re-release of Courageous, which opened to less than $0.3 million, despite some newly shot scenes and an opening on over a thousand screens.

While Shang-Chi would have been a smash no matter when it opened, its grosses were admittedly helped by the lack of competition in September.  October, by comparison, is packed to the gills with potential blockbusters, starting this weekend with three major new releases.  Likely displacing Shang-Chi at the top of the box office will be Venom: Let There Be Carnage, a sequel to the big 2018 Spider-Man spin-off starring Tom Hardy as a muckraking journalist in an uneasy relationship with the man-eating alien symbiote in his body.  The sequel finds an even more vicious symbiote invading the body of a serial killer (Woody Harrelson), after which all hell breaks loose.  Since this is PG-13, there will be a limited amount of carnage (as opposed to Carnage) on screen, which will likely help it score an easy #1 opening.

Also opening is the animated Addams Family 2, which features the creepy, kooky, mysterious, and spooky clan going on a road trip.  The first did good business leading up to Halloween two years ago, and with family audiences not having much to choose from (one of the reasons Jungle Cruise and Paw Patrol have stuck around for so long) there's no reason to think that this one won't do decent business as well.  Then, there's the weekend's big question mark, The Many Saints of Newark, a prequel movie to the beloved mobster series The Sopranos.  While the series still has passionate fans, it did cut to black 14 years ago, and it remains to be seen how many people really want to see this portrait of a mafioso as a young man.  The fact that it (of course) will also be available on HBO Max is another negative.  Possibly playing in enough theaters to hit the lower half of the Top 10 is Titane, a bizarre French horror movie about a female serial killer attracted to cars.  This one was the talk of Cannes over the summer.  Will Venom be able to pull anywhere near the $80 million the first one opened to three years ago?  Could the Addamses or the Many Saints pull an epic upset?  We'll find out next week.