In retrospect, loading September up with almost nothing but sequels was likely a bad idea, as moviegoers during the summer movie season seemed to make it clear that they were getting tired of franchise cogs. Sure, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 did well, but most of the summer buzz was on originals like Barbie, Oppenheimer, Sound of Freedom, and Elemental, while sequels and remakes such as The Flash, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part One, and The Little Mermaid all found themselves underperforming. September started off all right, with solid, if unspectacular starts for The Equalizer 3 and The Nun II, but since then, the box office has been stumbling badly, with this weekend seeing total grosses plunge even below Super Bowl weekend, when the chart was led by Magic Mike's Last Dance (another sequel).
Threepeating at the top is The Nun II, which for the second weekend in a row, won a very narrow victory. However, it's not like moviegoers are eager to see the latest adventures of the cosplaying demon Valak, but more they're even less interested in the other films out. The thriller took in $8.6 million, to bring its total to $69.4 million. It is still running fairly close to Insidious: The Red Door, meaning it is still likely heading to a final gross of between $80 and $85 million.
Back in 2010, Sylvester Stallone had the idea to do an old-fashioned, 80s-like, hard-R action movie. The result, The Expendables, proved to be a late summer hit. Like a lot of those 80s action movies, it got sequels, with diminishing returns. After Expendables 3 topped out at a disappointing $39.3 million (though it did solid business overseas) in 2014, the franchise was put on ice--at least until now, with the not-so-cleverly-titled Expend4bles. Maybe it should have stayed there. Stallone, Jason Statham, and Dolph Lundgren return, but most of the other stalwarts of the franchise, including Jet Li, Terry Crewes, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, sit this one out. In their place, we get Megan Fox and 50 Cent, who would have been good gets around the time the first one came out. This was widely expected to easily win the weekend, but instead, it stumbled to a $8 million opening. Overseas again may make up the difference, but don't be holding your breath for 5xpendables.
Kenneth Branagh has found himself a late-career franchise by directing and starring as Agatha Christie's eccentric, mustache-sporting detective Herclue Poirot. The third entry in the franchise, A Haunting in Venice, is keeping pace with the second one, Death on the Nile, with a $6.3 million second weekend, which brings its ten-day gross to $25.4 million. Death topped out at $45.6 million, which seems to be where Haunting is heading to as well. Will that be enough for Disney (or another studio) to fund a fourth Poirot mystery? My detective skills suggest the answer will be no.
In fourth, The Equalizer 3 continues to uphold the balance, as it brings in $4.8 million for a total of $81.3 million. That puts it about $8 million below where the first two movies were after four weeks. Given that those two films barely cleared $100 million, this one seems destined to finish below that threshold, though it will top $90 million.
Barbie has now spent a remarkable 10 weeks in the Top 5, though at this point its hanging on because almost nothing else is doing much business. This time around, it picked up another $3.2 million, for a total of $630.5 million. Her Corvette is likely to run out of gas before she makes the $23 million necessary to pass Jurassic World for the 10th spot on the all-time domestic list, but she still has an outside shot.
The ceremony is quickly coming to an end for My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, which could only smash $3.3 million worth of plates for a gross of $23.8 million. That's only about half of what Wedding 2, which itself was considered a disappointment, had made after three weekends in 2016.
We've seen plenty of movies involving Christian demons (see the top of this week's chart, for example) and some involving Jewish demons, but other religions' supernatural evil tends to get short shrift from American movies. So kudos for It Lives Inside for being a horror movie centered around a Hindu demon. Alas, even though this ended up being tiny distributor Neon's biggest debut ever, it could still pull in only $2.6 million. A24, by comparison, was able to open Talk to Me to $10.4 million back in July. We'll see if It Lives Inside has much staying power, but based on how both horror movies and Indian movies tend to do after their first weekend (even though this one is American produced), odds are good it won't be living inside theaters for much longer.
After a limited release last weekend, Dumb Money, the latest in the odd 2023 trend of movies based on real-life business deals (Air, Tetris, Blackberry, Flamin' Hot), expanded to semi-wide and took in $2.4 million, for a ten-day total of $2.7 million. The latest from director Craig Gillespie, this stars Paul Dano as a small-time day trader who, along with other struggling day traders, outsmarts several hedge fund managers (including Nick Offerman, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Seth Rogan) in causing the stock of GameStop to dramatically jump in price. Movies based on very recent events (this happened all happened less than three years ago) rarely do well at the box office, but a good cast and good reviews might make this an exception when it goes wide this weekend. That said, it is highly unlikely to come close to Air, which took in $14.5 million in its opening weekend back in April.
Rounding out the Top Ten, Blue Beetle rescued another $1.8 million for a total of $69.8 million, and Oppenheimer, in its tenth and likely final weekend in the Top 10, brought in $1.6 million for a total of $321.2 million.
In addition to the wide expansion of Dumb Money, three more films head out the last weekend of September, and in keeping with the month's theme, two of them are sequels. For the second weekend in a row, Lionsgate tries to resurrect a moribund franchise with Saw X, which brings back the franchise's main villain, Tobin Bell, this time seeking revenge against the fraudsters and quacks whose "miracle cure" for his terminal cancer turned out to be anything but. This is the third attempt to revive the series after Jigsaw and Spiral failed. We'll see if there is enough interest in this attempt for the film to still be around by Halloween. Pretty much on the opposite spectrum is Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie, the second feature film based on the beloved kiddie animated series. This one features the cast of puppies gaining superpowers, and boasts an all-star voice cast, including Kristen Bell, Taraji P. Henson, and Chris Rock. The first Paw Patrol movie grossed a solid $40.1 million back in 2021, and we'll see if this one can match it. The one original is The Creator, from Godzilla and Rogue One director Gareth Edwards, starring John David Washington as a soldier in a battle against AI attempting to exterminate the human race, who unexpectedly bonds with a robot girl. This one looks like a cross between The Terminator, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and Alita: Battle Angel, and it will be interesting to see, after a month of sequels, if audiences will turn out for a original. Will The Creator create the top spot for itself? Will Paw Patrol be the most mighty this weekend? Or will Saw slash its way to the front? We'll find out next week.
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