Halloween always leads to a soggy box office weekend when it falls on a Friday or Saturday, but this time it was once again a complete flop for the new openers, as both Sandra Bullock's Our Brand is Crisis and Bradley Cooper's Burnt failed to make double digits, and The Martian took its fourth weekend on top. Both were saddled with bad reviews, but Our Brand is Crisis earned a terrible "C+" Cinemascore and clocked in as the worst wide opening of Sandra Bullock's career. Burnt also marked the worst of Cooper's relatively short-lived one in comparison, coming in with 5.5 million and just a "B-" from audiences, although it did crack the top five.
The non-performances of the new movies left mostly holdovers in the rest of the top five though, as The Martian came in first with another 11 million and a new total of 182 million so far, soon to top Gladiator to become the most successful movie of director Ridley Scott's career, and that appears to be the narrative that's now driving its awards chances, as people are expecting the film to be embraced come Oscar time (I don't think it's nearly good enough for that, but whatever- awards are always political anyway, so I guess it makes sense). Goosebumps was second place, while Bridge of Spies was third, and Hotel Transylvania 2 rounded out the chart.
Top 5:
- The Martian- 11.8 million
- Goosebumps- 10.2 million
- Bridge of Spies- 8.1 million
- Hotel Transylvania 2- 5.8 million
- Burnt- 5 million
No major new releases in limited this weekend- in fact it's more news in the flop department as Truth and Suffragette both expanded to damaging PTA's, and Room didn't fare much better and will have to depend on some strong awards boosts to stick around in specialty theaters. It's also worth mentioning that Steve Jobs fell a steep 65 percent this weekend from its soft opening and will go down as one of the bigger puzzlers of the year, as people ponder how it could not have done better with great reviews, awards buzz and a terrific limited opening just a couple weeks ago. Next week should finally be a big one, as Spectre hits theaters and is expected to make around 80 million over the weekend, while The Peanuts Movie also comes out and a couple more would be Oscar contenders try to break through in limited release- it's Spotlight and Brooklyn's turn to try and find an audience in this dismal year for indies. See you then.
