Paramount’s horror sequel SMILE 2 in its debut led all movies with a weekend gross of $23.0M. The total box office for all movies came in at $70.0M, which was 17% lower than last year’s total of $84.2M on this same weekend, led by TAYLOR SWIFT: THE ERAS TOUR in its second weekend with $33.2M and Martin Scorsese’s KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON in its opening with $23.3M.
Last year’s top-grossing movie of the fourth quarter was TAYLOR SWIFT: THE ERAS TOUR, which earned $180M during the period. Next weekend, a solid opening is expected for Sony and Marvel’s VENOM: THE LAST DANCE, which will boost current year results and return 2024 to a winning weekend compared to 2023.
SMILE 2 follows in the footsteps of the original SMILE from 2022, which outperformed expectations with a healthy $105.9M domestic and $217.4M worldwide box office. Its worldwide total was nearly 13 times the $17M Paramount and Temple Hill spent to produce the movie. Based on this success, SMILE 2 was quickly queued up for a sequel, with work beginning in April 2023 only five months after SMILE’s theatrical run had ended. Here is how the two pictures compare:
SMILE Series Box Office Results
- SMILE (9/30/2022) – Domestic Opening $22.6M, Domestic Total $105.9M, Worldwide Total $217.4M, Budget $17M, RT Critics/Audience 80%/77%
- SMILE 2 (10/18/2024) – Domestic Opening $23.0M, Budget $28M, RT Critics/Audience 83%/84%
Filmmaker Parker Finn wrote and directed both films. The original focused on a therapist who treats a graduate student who, after witnessing her professor kill himself, is terrorized by a spirit that appears in a series of creepily smiling people who foretell her death. SMILE 2 changes up the scene, concentrating on a pop music star who experiences several increasingly disturbing events as she is about to head out on tour.
Many horror sequels maintain their focus on an established evil character or force and a hero or heroine who resists their wickedness. SMILE 2 goes in a different direction, with the dark and invisible entity reappearing in a new series of smiling people, afflicting a new main character.
This approach supports a virtually unlimited scope for new storylines, and Parker Finn has confirmed his plans to make a third film, stating “…we’ve maybe only scooped a single glass of water out of the ocean… I think it’s really fun to imagine a lineage of SMILE movies where each one becomes more off-the-rails than the previous one.”
Universal and DreamWorks’ THE WILD ROBOT continued its hold on second place by earning $10.1M, a dip of only 28% compared to last weekend. After 24 days, the original animated picture has earned $101.7M domestically and $171.5M worldwide.
Based on how well the movie is holding up over time, we expect it to finish its run with approximately $140M in domestic ticket sales. If it gets there, it will approach KUNG FU PANDA’s $143.5M from 2016 and make it the 24th highest-grossing movie of the 43 titles in the DreamWorks catalog.
After a #1 finish last weekend, TERRIFIER 3 wound up in third this weekend with $9.3M in new sales, a decline of 51%. Its 10-day total is $36.2M domestic and $42.7M worldwide, well ahead of the two earlier movies in the franchise.
- TERRIFIER (7/16/2016) – Opening Domestic $124K, 12-Day Domestic $337K, Total Domestic $340K
- TERRIFIER 2 (10/6/2022) – Opening Domestic $805K, 11-Day Domestic $2.5M, Total Domestic $11M
- TERRIFIER 3 (10/11/2024) – Opening Domestic $18.3M, 10-Day Domestic $36.2M
Amazingly, TERRIFIER 3 after only 10 days in theatres has more than tripled the total domestic gross of TERRIFIER 2.
BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE finished in fourth place by adding $5.0M, now with a 45-day total of $284.0M. It has moved past DUNE 2’s $282.1M into fourth place in the domestic box office for 2024. The worldwide total gross of $431.0M is more than 4X the $100M spent to produce the film, which normally would guarantee another chapter in the franchise.
However, when director Tim Burton was asked about making a third film, he said, “Let’s do the math… it took 35 years to do this, so I’ll be over 100. But I guess it’s possible with the advent of science these days, but I don’t think so.” We expect that Warner Bros. will find a way to convince Burton and Keaton to say “Beetlejuice” for a third time and that it will take significantly less than three decades to do so.
WE LIVE IN TIME from A24 finished fifth with a weekend box office of $4.2M. The romantic drama is directed by John Crowley is best known for directing BROOKLYN, which received a Best Picture Oscar nomination at the 2015 Academy Awards. Starring Andrew Garfield (SPIDER-MAN) and Florence Pugh (OPPENHEIMER), it tells the story of an up-and-coming chef and recent divorcée whose lives are changed when a chance encounter brings them together.
The film shows their relationship and romance in the decades that follow. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 6th to very favorable reviews, now having an 80% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and 90% from audiences. After spending $20M to make the movie, it will need to expand beyond the 985 theatres where it played this weekend and do well for a few weeks in a row to produce the estimated $50M in worldwide box office required for it to be profitable.
Where Are We as of 10/17/24
After 41 weeks, the 2024 year-to-date box office has climbed to 87% of 2023 totals and 73% of 2019 totals at this same point in the year.
