Warner Bros.’ “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” now has the second-highest-ever opening weekend in the month of September, scoring an excellent $110 million domestic launch from 4,575 theaters.
After earning $13.5 million from Thursday previews and $28.3 million on Friday, Saturday saw a 45% increase to $41.8 million, ensuring that Tim Burton’s sequel becomes the second September release to earn a $100 million-plus opening. The first to do so was also a Warner Bros. title: Andy Muschietti’s “It” with $123.4 million in 2017.
In recent years, the box office has had to suffer through weeks of poor weekend returns between August and October due to a lack of highly anticipated tentpoles. That would have been the case here without “Beetlejuice 2,” as no other film this weekend grossed more than $10 million.
But Warner Bros. has allowed the fall box office to get off to a big start that should be sustained in the coming weeks by films like Paramount’s “Transformers One” and Universal/DreamWorks’ “The Wild Robot.”
How well “Beetlejuice 2” legs out against those films has yet to be seen. With a B+ on CinemaScore and a 4/5 score from PostTrak general audience polls, audience reception has been solid and should lead to a strong second weekend — particularly given that next weekend’s big release is Universal/Blumhouse’s bleak horror film “Speak No Evil.”
After that, it will be down to whether audience buzz for “Beetlejuice 2” has extended far beyond fans of the original film. Opening day demographics, as expected, skewed heavily towards millennials and Gen X audiences, with 76% over the age of 25 and 32% between the ages of 35-49.
Summer holdovers provided some minimal additions to the weekend’s business. Marvel Studios’ “Deadpool & Wolverine” is in second with $6.4 million in its seventh weekend, bringing its total to $613 million domestic and $1.25 billion worldwide. That is enough for it to place it in the top 25 highest-grossing films of all time before inflation adjustment.
ShowBiz Direct’s “Reagan” is in third with $5.1 million in its second weekend, just a 33% drop from its $7.6 million opening weekend. While not finding traction with a significant number of moviegoers, the biopic starring Dennis Quaid has found a lane with Republican audiences and should turn a modest theatrical profit, as it has grossed $18.4 million so far against a reported $25 million budget.
Disney/20th Century’s “Alien: Romulus” is in fourth with $3.5 million, grossing $96 million domestic and nearly $300 million worldwide. This weekend, Disney crossed $4 billion in global grosses for 2024, becoming the first studio to reach that mark — despite not having any releases in the first quarter of the year. “Deadpool & Wolverine” and “Inside Out 2” are the big drivers behind this achievement, combining for $2.9 billion worldwide.
Sony’s “It Ends With Us” completes the top 5 in a virtual tie with “Alien: Romulus,” with a weekend gross of $3.5 million. The Colleen Hoover adaptation is now the highest-grossing non-sequel of the year with $141 million grossed domestically and $300 million worldwide.
Finally, Fathom Events has a new distributor record with the 15th anniversary re-release of Laika’s “Coraline,” as the film has now grossed $32 million since its return to theaters.
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