Dune has a solid opening, while Ron's Gone Wrong does exactly that and art house audiences say oui to The French Dispatch.
Of October's big four blockbusters, Dune was always going to be the hardest sell. It is the only one that's not a sequel, its source material is a doorstop of a sci-fi novel that has always been more of a cult success rather than a mainstream one, and the last movie version is remembered as being wildly incomprehensible. In addition, star Timothée Chalamet may have spent the last four years as one of Hollywood's most buzzed-about young actors, but he had yet to headline a tentpole film, and there's the entire HBO Max factor as well.
To the immense relief of Warner Bros. executives, Dune opened pretty much as expected, taking in $41 million in its first weekend. That should be a good enough start to get it over $100 million by the end of its domestic run. Its start is easily the best of any movie that also debuted simultaneously on HBO Max, and second-best of any movie offered free to subscribers of a streaming service (behind last week's launch of Halloween Kills, also on Peacock). All that, combined with strong overseas grosses, was enough for the studio to belatedly announce that Dune 2 would be arriving in theaters (and presumably only in theaters) in October 2023.
Speaking of Halloween Kills, the second weekend was murder for the horror flick, as it plunged over 70% to $14.5 million. Horror movies, of course, are notorious for their steep drop-offs, but they're usually not this steep. The drop puts the chances of the movie, which has a ten-day gross of $73.1 million, in danger of missing the $100 million mark. The fact that next weekend is actually Halloween might help stabilize the grosses a bit, but expect further big drops come November.
No Time to Die continues to perform adequately, if below the levels of its Craig predecessors, pulling in $12.2 million for a total of $120.4 million. Its overall gross is a bit above where Casino Royale was at this point in its run, but a bit below where Royale's weekend grosses were. In short, it's probably not going to make it to the $160 million level both Royale and Quantum of Solace finished at, meaning this will be the lowest grossing outing for 007 since The World is Not Enough in 1999.
Sony is likely satisfied with the performance of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, which swallowed another $9.3 million this weekend. That said, the film has just now gotten to a overall gross ($182 million) double that of its opening weekend, and might still fall short of $200 million, things that the studio probably wasn't expecting with that monster opening.
In fifth, animated newcomer Ron's Gone Wrong, about a malfunctioning robot, malfunctioned itself, opening to a dismal $7.3 million. A leftover from 20th Century No Longer Fox from before the Disney purchase, it's understandable why the Mouse House didn't invest much money in getting this out to the public. Expect this to be long-forgotten by the time Disney's Encanto arrives at Thanksgiving.
In a sign of how week Ron was, it couldn't even double the fourth-weekend gross of The Addams Family 2, which scared up another $4.5 million. It stands at $48.5 million, and could still pass The Boss Baby: Family Business as the year's highest-grossing animated title--assuming Encanto doesn't get there first.
The Last Duel, another no-longer Fox holdover, at least held onto a higher percentage of its audience in the second weekend than Halloween Kills, did, but that's cold comfort when it only made $2.1 million, for a ten-day total of $8.5 million. It should top $10 million, but $15 million looks out of reach.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is wrapping up its very successful run just as the next entry from the MCU arrives in a week and a half. The actioner took in another $2 million to bring its total to a pandemic-best $221 million.
Opening in ninth was the weekend's other movie featuring Timothée Chalamet amid an all-star cast, Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch, which arrived with an impressive $1.4 million from just 54 theaters. As the film goes wider this weekend, we'll see if those numbers can hold up against more mainstream fare.
Rounding out the Top Ten is Indian comedy Honsla Rakh, which, unlike most Indian movies that make the Top 10, managed to stay in it for a second weekend. The ten-day gross is $1.8 million.
Halloween weekend is usually a slow one, as potential audiences are usually pre-occupied with festivities and studios usually treat the weekend as a dump ahead of the first big holiday movies arriving the next weekend. That's probably unfair to this weekend's big opening, Last Night in Soho, a stylish-looking thriller starring relative newcomer Thomasin McKenzie (best known as the Jewish girl being hidden by Scarlett Johansson in Jojo Rabbit) as a fashion designer in modern-day London who finds she's able to travel to the 1960s, where she meets a singer played by Anya Taylor-Joy. It has a shot at the top slot, though it will likely have to be satisfied with a top five opening. Also arriving is the horror thriller Antlers, staring Keri Russell and Jessie Plemons, the anime My Hero Academia: World Heroes Mission, based on the popular TV show, and hoping to make the bottom rungs of the Top Ten, the drama A Mouthful of Air, and the disaster flick 13 Minutes. Will any of them break through, or will Dune reign again? We'll find out next weekend.
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