First Tyler Perry swatted away Tom Cruise, and now he’s overpowered Tom Hanks: For the second straight week, “Boo! A Madea Halloween” has topped the box office. The latest franchise entry saw only a 41% drop as it headed into its second weekend, adding $16.6 million to the bottom line. This doesn’t particularly change much of the narrative around ‘Madea Halloween,’ as it’s still on track to finish among the best in the series “Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Family Reunion” ($63 million domestic) and “Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection” ($65 million domestic), and possibly overtake them, but still finish behind the all-time topper “Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail” ($91 million domestic). But with a total budget of $20 million, Lionsgate and everyone involved are likely quite happy with the result.
Less enthused are the folks at Sony, who saw the third chapter in the Robert Langdon series, “Inferno,” flame out hard with $15 million. It’s well behind the $77 million debut of “The Da Vinci Code” and the $46 million bow of “Angels & Demons,” and it begs the question why they even bothered with this movie. The knee-jerk answer would be international box office, and while it did earn $94 million overseas, the franchise saw a big dip between the first two movies, and will see another for the third. Consider this franchise hopefully over. For Hanks, the opening pretty much matches what “Bridge Of Spies” did last fall, but that had much better reviews and some awards-season heat, going on to quietly accumulate $72 million at home. That certainly will not be the outcome here.
While North American audiences still have to wait, moviegoers around the world got their chance to see “Doctor Strange,” and they did it to the tune of $86 million. It’s not a record-breaking figure, but Marvel will nonetheless be happy with the result for this lesser-known superhero. The figure bests the foreign debuts of “Ant-Man,” “Guardians Of The Galaxy,” and “Captain America: The Winter Solider,” and puts it in about the same ballpark as “Thor: The Dark World.” That film wound up with $438 million overseas, and another $206 million domestic, for a total of $644 worldwide. Tracking suggests “Doctor Strange” will debut with $70-75 million next weekend, about $10 million off the mark of ‘Dark World,’ but it should probably wind up with roughly the same figures.
Over at the arthouse, “Moonlight” continued to shine, expanding to a total of 36 cinemas, and pocketing $900,826 for a per-screen average of $25,023. There’s still a long awards season ahead and you can bet A24 is crafting a release plan to ensure it keeps playing around the country right through until the Oscars. Meanwhile, nudging into the top 10 was Indian flick “Ae Dil Hai Mushkil,” perhaps capturing audiences looking to celebrate Diwali at the movies, to the tune of $2.1 million.
1. “Boo! A Madea Halloween” — $16.6 million ($52 mil.)
2. “Inferno” — $15 million
3. “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back” — $9.5 million ($39.6 mil.)
4. “The Accountant” — $8.4 million ($61.2 mil.)
5. “Ouija: Origin Of Evil” — $7 million ($24.6 mil.)
6. “The Girl On The Train” — $4.2 million ($65.9 mil.)
7. “Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children” — $3.9 million ($79.8 mil.)
8. “Keeping Up With The Joneses” — $3.3 million ($10.7 mil.)
9. “Storks”— $2.7 million ($68.2 mil.)
10. “Ae Dil Hai Mushkil” — $2.1 million