“Jigsaw” Returns from the Dead on Weak Halloween Weekend

By Kip Mooney • On • In Weekend Box Office Report Weekend Box Office Report 0

BOX OFFICE REPORT

October 27-29, 2017

(estimates from BoxOfficeMojo.com)

 

TOP 5

Jigsaw $16.2 million
Boo 2! A Madea Halloween  $10.0 million
Geostorm $5.6 million
Happy Death Day $5.0 million
Blade Runner 2049 $3.9 million

 

After a seven-year absence, the Saw franchise came back to life, just in time for Halloween. Once again, it dominated the box office. But dominate is a relative term when $16.5 million is more than enough to win the weekend. That's just above the nearly franchise-ending Saw VI and just below the 2004 original, long before anyone had big expectations. Still, it beat out all other newcomers.

Boo 2! fell all the way down to $10 million. That's putting it well behind its predecessor, and this is the last weekend people will really be looking for a goofy horror comedy from Tyler Perry. It will sink like a stone from here on out. That's also true of Geostorm, which will be mentioned in the same breath as massive flops like King Arthur: Legend of the Sword at the end of the year.

Happy Death Day on the other hand, already has plans for a sequel, as Blumhouse continues to be the most powerful studio in horror. The film, which took the Groundhog Day premise and applied it to the slasher genre, has officially made 10 times its budget in just three weekends. Blade Runner 2049 could play for another three years and wouldn't be able to do that. It just now passed $80 million.

Outside the top 5:

  • This Weekend's Indie Champ: The Square, the Palme d'Or winner from Ruben Ostlund. The art world satire averaged $38,000 on its pair of screens.
  • Neither the well-reviewed Thank You for Your Service, nor the critically reviled Suburbicon managed to crack the top five. They earned $3.7 million and $2.8 million, respectively.
  • But the worst weekend belongs to Amityville: The Awakening. Even though its distributor (The Weinstein Company) is having major issues and it's already available on VOD, the fact that a new entry in a long-running horror franchise made less money than instant punchline Tulip Fever (in its ninth weekend, no less) is a true disaster.

Next week: Thor: Ragnarok kicks off the holiday movie season. It's the best-reviewed Marvel movie to date, and the most fun, too. I'd say $100 million, easily. A Bad Moms Christmas should also do well on its own, taking in around $30 million.

Facebooktwitterredditmail

About Kip Mooney

Kip Mooney
Like many film critics born during and after the 1980s, my hero is Roger Ebert. The man was already the best critic in the nation when he won the Pulitzer in 1975, but his indomitable spirit during and after his recent battle with cancer keeps me coming back to read not only his reviews but his insightful commentary on the everyday. But enough about a guy you know a lot about. I knew I was going to be a film critic—some would say a snob—in middle school, when I had to voraciously defend my position that The Royal Tenenbaums was only a million times better than Adam Sandler’s remake of Mr. Deeds. From then on, I would seek out Wes Anderson’s films and avoid Sandler’s like the plague. Still, I like to think of myself as a populist, and I’ll be just as likely to see the next superhero movie as the next Sundance sensation. The thing I most deplore in a movie is laziness. I’d much rather see movies with big ambitions try and fail than movies with no ambitions succeed at simply existing. I’m also a big advocate of fun-bad movies like The Room and most of Nicolas Cage’s work. In the past, I’ve written for The Dallas Morning News and the North Texas Daily, which I edited for a semester. I also contributed to Dallas-based Pegasus News, which in the circle of life, is now part of The Dallas Morning News, where I got my big break in 2007. Eventually, I’d love to write and talk about film full-time, but until that’s a viable career option, I work as an auditor for Wells Fargo. I hope to one day meet my hero, go to the Toronto International Film Festival, and compete on Jeopardy. Until then, I’m excited to share my love of film with you.

Leave a Reply