Warner Bros.’ “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is kicking off the fall box office in a big way with a $41.5 million opening day from 4,575 theaters. That includes $13.5 million from Thursday previews.
With that start, industry estimates have Tim Burton’s sequel meeting independent projections for a $100 million opening. If the rest of the weekend plays out well, Warner Bros. will have claim to only the second $100 million-plus domestic launch ever in the month of September, having earned the first seven years ago with the $123.4 million opening of “It.”
For now, Warner Bros. is keeping its projections slightly below that mark, estimating a domestic opening of $97 million that would still be a success given the film’s $100 million budget before marketing costs.
While not as strong as summer hits like “Inside Out 2” or “Deadpool & Wolverine,” reception for “Beetlejuice 2” is largely positive with Rotten Tomatoes scores of 77% critics and 84% audience. CinemaScore audience polls returned a grade of B+.
That grade may not seem good enough in a post-shutdown era where only a small handful of films have legged out after earning a CinemaScore grade below A-, but this is par for the course for director Tim Burton, whose signature macabre style has never been something for everyone.
In fact, that B+ is a better grade than the B that the original “Beetlejuice” earned back in 1988, when it opened to a mere $8 million — $21.2 million in today’s money — and legged out to to $73.7 million, or just under $196 million after inflation adjustment.
“Beetlejuice 2” will already be halfway to clearing that adjusted mark by the end of the weekend, but how far it will leg out is unclear. While exhibition sources reported advance ticket sales were strong across demographics, CinemaScore polls reflected an audience driven by Gen X and Millennial nostalgia, with audiences age 35-49 being the largest cohort at 32% and 25-34 just behind at 27%.
Audiences below the age of 25, conversely, came in at 24%. It’s possible that the opening night crowd is skewed by particular interest from audiences old enough to have seen the first “Beetlejuice” in theaters. That was the case two years ago for “Top Gun: Maverick” when Gen X drove its opening weekend before word-of-mouth spread to younger moviegoers.
We will have to see if and by how much the age split evens out over the weekend and the coming week, as that will go a long way to determining how much traction “Beetlejuice 2” will have against animated films like “Transformers One” and “The Wild Robot” coming up in the latter half of the month.
