Warner Bros.’ “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” continues to lead the U.S. box office with a strong second weekend of $51.6 million, holding its drop to 53% from its $111 million opening weekend.
Unlike Warner Bros.’ spring hits “Dune: Part Two” and “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is being heavily driven by domestic audiences, with its $188 million U.S./Canada total accounting for 71% of the film’s $264.3 global cume.
But with a reported $100 million budget, Tim Burton’s sequel is still on its way to being a solid theatrical success for Warner Bros., exceeding the inflation-adjusted domestic run of the first “Beetlejuice,” which grossed $74.6 million in 1988 or approximately $196 million in today’s money.
Paramount’s “Transformers One” and Universal/DreamWorks’ “The Wild Robot” will carry the box office in the coming weeks, but for now there are a handful of newcomers providing smaller contributions to the marketplace. Leading them is Universal/Blumhouse’s remake of the Danish horror film “Speak No Evil” with an opening weekend of $11.5 million from 3,375 screens.
That result meets pre-release projections of a $10-13 million start and puts the film on track for a modestly successful theatrical run against its reported $15 million budget. Starring James McAvoy, the film has been generally well received with a B+ on CinemaScore and an 85% Rotten Tomatoes score.
Marvel Studios’ “Deadpool & Wolverine” is in third with $5.2 million in its eighth weekend, enough to push the R-rated MCU film past $1.3 billion in global grosses.
In fourth is SDG/Daily Wire’s anti-DEI mockumentary “Am I Racist?” with a $4.75 million opening weekend from 1,517 locations. The film is the first major theatrical release from Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing’s conservative media company and has a low break-even point with a reported microbudget of $3 million before marketing costs.
ShowBiz’s “Reagan” completes the top 5 with just under $3 million in its third weekend, inching closer to turning a profit against its $25 million production budget with a $23.3 million domestic total.
Outside the top 5 is the big misfire of the week: Lionsgate’s “The Killer’s Game” with an opening weekend of just $2.6 million from 2,623 theaters. After the high-budget flop of “Borderlands” and the curtailed theatrical run of “The Crow” after its $4.6 million opening, the action movie starring Dave Bautista has opened even lower this weekend as the last three wide Lionsgate releases have grossed only $27.2 million combined in North America.
More to come…
