Weekend Wrap-Up: Accountant Wins with $24.71 million, but 2016 Goes Further in Debt

October 18, 2016

The Accountant

The weekend box office was not good. The Accountant did beat expectations with $24.71 million, but the other wide releases missed expectations. As a result, the box office fell 6% from last weekend to $97 million. The weekend box office should never be below $100 million, outside of a few dead zones during the year. We’ve been below that mark too frequently this year. Worse still, this is 18% lower than the same weekend last year. Year-to-date, 2016 still has a substantial lead over 2015 at $8.78 billion to $8.43 billion. However, we are nearing the $325 million mark where we have reason to panic. Remember, The Force Awakens earned $650 million during 2015 and Rogue One is only expected to earn half that much this year. We need to maintain a lead that large, or else 2016 will likely lose in the year-over-year comparison in the end.

The Accountant earned first place with $24.71 million, which is better than predictions and a little better than last week’s winner, The Girl on the Train. The film’s reviews will neither help nor hurt its legs, but a CinemaScore of A should be an asset going forward. On the other hand, the film cost $40 million to make and reportedly cost nearly as much to advertise, so it will need help to break even.

The Girl on the Train matched expectations perfectly with $12.25 million over the weekend for a total of $46.83 million after two weeks of release. This is just over what it cost to make, so as long as it finds an audience internationally, it will break even sooner rather than later. It is still too early to tell how well it will do internationally, but early numbers are mostly positive.

Kevin Hart: What Now? earned third place with $11.77 million This is better than Kevin Hart’s previous stand-up concert movie, Let Me Explain, opened with, but that’s because the previous film opened on a Wednesday and it earned more than $17 million over its five-day weekend. Perhaps this film’s reviews will give it better legs. However, it cost less than $10 million to make, so even weak reviews will likely result in a profit sometime during its home market run.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children pulled in $8.96 million over the weekend for a three-week total of $65.89 million. The film is doing well compared to most recent Young Adult Novel Adaptations. However, it cost $110 million to make, so it needed to do better than that to justify a sequel.

Deepwater Horizon rounded out the top five with $6.41 million over the weekend for a total of $49.39 million after three weeks of release. It needed to crack $100 million domestically to break even any time soon. It’s not even going to come close to that.

The final wide release of the week was Max Steel. The film earned just $2.18 million in 2,034 theaters over the weekend. It did avoid having a sub $1,000 theater average, but that’s hardly a reason to celebrate. Furthermore, it still doesn’t have a single positive review, so its legs will likely be really short.

The sophomore class begins with Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life, which held on rather well down just 37%. However, it started poorly, so still left the film with just $4.35 million over the weekend for a ten-day total of $13.86 million. The Birth of a Nation performed even worse, down 61% to $2.75 million over the weekend for a two-week total of $12.28 million. Both films will lose a large nu,mber of their theaters this weekend.

- Weekend Box Office Chart

- The Accountant Comparisons
- Kevin Hart: What Now? Comparisons
- Max Steel Comparisons

Filed under: Weekend Wrap-up, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Deepwater Horizon, The Accountant, The Birth of a Nation, Kevin Hart: What Now?, The Girl on the Train, Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life, Max Steel, Kevin Hart