A Slower Box Office Weekend, But Still With Promise

 Every weekend can’t be a Barbie weekend at the Box Office, but we still have some promising progress even as we enter the awkward mid-season slump time for theatrical releases before we fully enter the end-of-year cycle. Blake & Wang P.A. entertainment attorney in USA, Brandon Blake, takes a closer look at this weekend’s performances.

                                                               Brandon Blake

A Spooky Double Billing

The Nun II sequel continues to build on the franchise-best start it had last weekend with $14.7M, for a gross so far of $56.5M domestically and a further $30.1M in international markets. This also puts it as another 2023 film with over $100M in the bag. So far, it is outperforming other titles from the Conjuring universe overseas, other than its precursor.

 

However, it has a challenger in A Haunting in Venice, which took $14.5M domestically for a global start of $37.2M. While technically a new adaption of the Agatha Christie story of the same name, Disney’s marketing has chosen to ramp up the horror aspects of the movie this time around. No doubt in preparation for the upcoming Halloween spooky season. This continues the wider trend towards horror-themed films we’ve seen over the last few years, too.

Further Progress

The opening for A Haunting in Venice is in line with expectations for the picture, but it is still a little muted overall. This can be partly laid at the door of a lack of star-fueled marketing for its final publicity push due to the SAG-AFTRA strike. However, it did draw a lot of attention from younger moviegoers, who typically are the most engaged movie audiences at present. However, the franchise itself has typically skewed older, and they were notable only in their absence. If its performance doesn’t pep up in the coming weeks, it won’t perform much better than pandemic-affected Death on the Nile, although it benefits from lower production costs.

 

While moviegoing has slowed down a little from the classic summer rush, that’s only to be expected. With Barbie and Oppenheimer continuing to draw crowds, and some other notable performances from Dumb Money and The Equalizer 3, it was a solid, if unexceptional, weekend. Now all focus lies on the end of the year to close out the 2023 box office with (hopefully) a bang.

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