With Halloween falling on a Friday night, Hollywood’s fall winning streak was snapped bigtime with the total box office down 31% from the same weekend last year as newcomer Nightcrawler tied with horror movie holdover Ouija with the estimated totals for both films at $10.9 million. The actual winner will be revealed tomorrow when actual box office figures from Sunday are available. This past weekend’s poor performance was anticipated by studio execs who left the frame open for indie releases as well as a revival of the horror film Saw, and the theatrical release of the adaptation of Joe (Locke & Key) Hill’s novel Horns, which had previously been available on VOD. So this was the kind of weekend to throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks--and, it turns out, not much did.Screenwriter Dan Gilroy made his directorial debut with Nightcrawler, a grim thriller set in the amoral world of freelance video tabloid journalists who follow police calls and sirens to photograph grisly scenes of murder and mayhem. Nightcrawler stars Jake Gyllenhaal, who channels Robert DeNiro’s Travis Bickle Taxi Driver performance at every opportunity--and Gyllenhaal’s portrait of a disturbed loner in the urban jungle is every bit as effective with the critics as was DeNiro, resulting in a stellar 94% positive rating for the film on Rotten Tomatoes. The question is will audiences agree with the critics and give NIghtcrawler a long run in theaters? The competition from mainstream films increases exponentially over the next few weeks, so the fate of Nightcrawler will take a few more weeks to determine.
Nightcrawler was supposed to win the weekend easily, but, while the Friday night Halloween might have been bad news for movie-going in general (which was down 40% from from last year), it benefited the horror movie Ouija, which topped the box office last weekend and suffered just a 45% drop in its second frame, a very small decline for a horror movie. Produced for just $5 million, Ouija has already earned nearly $35 million.
In the absence of a wave of big new releases the holdovers flourished. The gritty Brad Pitt World War II film Fury slipped just 31.9% as it added $9.1 million, bringing its domestic cumulative to $60.4 million after three weekends, while Gone Girl slipped just 20.3% in its fifth weekend adding $8.8 million to drive its total to $136.6. The animated feature The Book of Life fell only 17.3% and finished in fifth place with $8.3 million, and the action-packed John Wick also added $8 million.
The Bill Murray/Melissa McCarthy character comedy St. Vincent added 270 theaters and its total actually grew, although by a microscopic .1%. This film has considerable potential as a sleeper comedy hit, on disc and PPV, if not in theaters.
| Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): October 31 - November 2, 2014 | ||||||
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| Film | Weekend Gross | Screens | Avg./ Screen | Total Gross | Wk# |
| 1 | Nightcrawler | $10,909,000 | 2,766 | $3,944 | $10,909,000 | 1 |
| 2 | Ouija | $10,900,000 | 2,899 | $3,760 | $34,963,000 | 2 |
| 3 | Fury | $9,100,000 | 3,313 | $2,747 | $60,437,000 | 3 |
| 4 | Gone Girl | $8,800,000 | 2,834 | $3,105 | $136,602,000 | 5 |
| 5 | The Book of Life | $8,300,000 | 2,794 | $2,971 | $40,524,000 | 3 |
| 6 | John Wick | $8,050,000 | 2,589 | $3,109 | $27,589,000 | 2 |
| 7 | St. Vincent | $7,752,000 | 2,552 | $3,038 | $19,527,000 | 4 |
| 8 | Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day | $6,485,000 | 2,896 | $2,239 | $53,626,000 | 4 |
| 9 | The Judge | $3,400,000 | 1,942 | $1,751 | $39,550,000 | 4 |
| 10 | Dracula Untold | $2,946,000 | 1,913 | $1,540 | $52,859,000 | 4 |
Disney’s Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day was down just 9.9% in its fourth weekend. After a slow start, this family film has now earned nearly $70 million, but it will face major competition from Big Hero Six from next weekend.
Oscar hopeful Birdman added 181 theaters and still posted a superb $10,866 per theater average, though its weekend total of $2.5 million wasn’t enough to crack the top ten.
Poorly reviewed thriller Before I Go to Sleep (38% positive on Rotten Tomatoes) opened in 1900 theaters, but earned just $2 million and debuted at #14 in spite of a cast that includes Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth.
Before I Go to Sleep looks like a bomb, but its debut went a lot better than the revival of the torture porn horror film Saw. The Saw 10th Anniversary revival in 2063 theaters earned a pitiful $315 per venue for a measly $650,000.
Horns, which is based on a novel by Joe Hill and stars Daniel Radcliffe, has been available on VOD for some time, so its debut in 103 theaters was at least, an unsurprising dud as it earned just $1,010 per screen for a total of $104,000.
Check back next week to see how Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar opens along with the Disney animated feature Big Hero 6, and the Stephen Hawking film biography, The Theory of Everything.
--Tom Flinn
