Box Office Report: The Juice is Loose

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | September 16, 2024 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | September 16, 2024 |

When Beetlejuice was released in 1988, it was a commercial success, but nobody expected it to become a multi-pronged franchise success. It won an Oscar, spawned a cartoon TV series, a bunch of video games, and a hit Broadway musical. Talk of a sequel went on for years, with a script Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian floating around among writers (including Kevin Smith.) Still, when we finally got that follow-up, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, there was no guarantee it’d be a box office hit in 2024, especially with a reported $100 million budget. Well, the ghost with the most proved the living wrong.

In its second week of release, Tim Burton’s latest earned $51.6 million, bringing its domestic gross to $188 million. It’s got $264 million worldwide so far, and looks like it could stick around for a few more weeks as we head further into spooky season.

The biggest new release of the past weekend is Speak No Evil, the horror remake of a Danish film of the same name. It landed at number two with $11.5 million from 3,375 theatres.

And then there’s, oh dear lord, Am I Racist? It’s a Matt Walsh production. I don’t feel like wasting much time on this chuckle-f*ck. His ‘film’ made $4.75 million from 1,517 theatres, putting it behind Deadpool & Wolverine in its eighth week of release.

The Killer’s Game stars Dave Bautista as an assassin who thinks he’s dying and gets caught up in an assassin’s mixed-up contract, and it made $2.6 million from 2,623 cinemas. Another not-great release for Lionsgate, which has had a rough 2024 between The Crow and Borderlands (the former is already being pushed onto home release.)

God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust landed at number ten, because apparently this was the weekend for unmitigated propagandistic nonsense. But don’t worry, this new Dean Cain classic wasn’t a hit. It only earned $1,466,812 from 1,392 locations. Twisters made about $260,000 less in its ninth week of release in a similar number of theatres.

Dan Da Dan: First Encounter is the first three episodes of a new anime that were put together for a theatrical release. It’s about high schoolers, ghosts, and aliens. It made just over $1 million from 610 cinemas.

In limited release news: The Critic, a historical drama starring Ian McKellen as a critic (the best job ever), made $200,000 from 556 places; My Old Ass, a sci-fi comedy about a woman encountering her older self via a mushroom trip, grossed $171,743 from seven locations; and Music for Mushrooms, described as ‘a soundtrack for the psychedelic practitioner, brought in $8,500 from one theatre.

This coming week sees the release of animation Transformers One (Michael Bay not included), horror film Never Let Go, and the 25th anniversary of The Matrix.

You can check out the rest of the weekend box office here.