It was a slow weekend at the domestic box office, with holdover Boo! A Madea Halloween crowned champion in its second weekend. The film is the seventh entry in Tyler Perry’s highly successful Madea series. With a strong 41.5% drop, the film’s 16.7 million was enough to pull ahead of Inferno, the third film in the Robert Langdon series.
Reuniting director Ron Howard and star Tom Hanks, Inferno stumbled domestically with a mere 15 million dollar opening weekend haul. That represents a staggering 30 million drop compared to Angels & Demons’ 46.2 million dollar opening in 2009, and a whopping 60 million drop compared to The Da Vinci Code‘s 77 million dollar opening in 2006. While audiences in the U.S. have shown little interest in the third film in this series, the film has already collected over a 130 million at the international box office. So the flick will likely give Columbia Pictures a nice profit given its 75 million dollar budget.
The film’s domestic failings represents another headache for director Ron Howard, who has struggled to find an audience for his recent outings. Last year’s In the Heart of the Sea earned a paltry 25 million domestically (93 million worldwide), and made a big dent in Warner Brothers’ profit margin given the film’s 100 million dollar budget. Earlier, both Rush and The Dilemma had struggled to find a solid base for Howard’s directorial efforts. Outside of the Langdon series, Howard hasn’t had a solid hit since 2001’s A Beautiful Mind.
In other holdover news, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back dropped 58.2% in its second weekend for a 9.5 million dollar haul. The film now stands at 39.6 million domestically, and 93.8 million worldwide. While the film won’t get anywhere close to the original’s 218 million haul, it is likely to give its studio a slight profit once it opens in its remaining markets in November.
Rounding out the top 5 are The Accountant and Ouija: Origin of Evil with 8.4 and 7 million respectively.
Next weekend will likely bring more excitement with the domestic bow of Marvel’s Doctor Strange, Mel Gibson’s comeback flick Hacksaw Ridge, and the animated flick Trolls.
To get the full box office results for the weekend, go to Box Office Mojo.
Top 10 Box Office Earners, October 28th-30th
- Boo! A Madea Halloween: 16.7 million. 52 million worldwide total.
- Inferno: 15 million. 147.7 million worldwide total
- Jack Reacher Never Go Back: 9.5 million. 93.8 million worldwide total.
- The Accountant: 8.4 million. 72.1 million worldwide total.
- Ouija: Origin of Evil: 7 million. 43.7 million worldwide total.
- The Girl on the Train: 4.2 million. 122.4 million worldwide total.
- Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children: 3.9 million. 243.4 million worldwide total.
- Keeping Up With the Joneses: 3.3 million. 15.8 million worldwide total.
- Storks: 2.7 million. 153.5 million worldwide total.
- Ae Dil Hai Mushkil: 2.1 million. 11.2 million worldwide total.
