Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | November 9, 2026
There’s a blue wave in the U.S. elections in the same week that Godzilla rises from the waters and takes over the American box office. Coincidence?!
The current run of Godzilla movies from Japan has been stellar, and audiences on the other side of the Pacific have noticed. Godzilla Minus Zero easily took the top spot this past weekend, grossing $31.6 million from 3,254 cinemas. Not bad for a film that’s 39th in the franchise. Godzilla is obviously an international icon and Hollywood has made more than its fair share of movies starring everyone’s favourite metaphor for the atomic bomb. But these kinds of numbers for a Japanese movie are not typical. Other countries’ blockbusters don’t usually get releases this wide in America, and when they do, it’s often with a bad dub. See, sometimes you just need to trust audiences. And Godzilla. He’s our friend.
At number two is The Cat in the Hat, now Mike Myers-free! This animated version features Bill Hader and wasn’t an instant disaster so good for them. It earned $20.5 million from just over 4,000 locations.
At number three is Drummer Boy, an Angel Studios production that’s also a musical about an American soldier who falls in love with an enslaved woman during the American revolutionary war? The director is playing the lead, and he’s apparently an Australian Christian musician. Sure, why not? This one drummed up $9,312,551.
What a week. We had a Japanese blockbuster top the box office and at number five we have Ramayana, a Hindi-language epic adaptation of the story of the same name. It is the most expensive Indian film ever made and also the most expensive non-English language film ever made. That was certainly enough to pique the interest of many American viewers, and the movie took in $8.65 million from 1,433 theatres.
At eight is Wild Horse Nine, the latest film by Martin McDonagh. It’s an early awards contender but looks like it’ll be a slow burn at the box office, as it debuted with $6 million from 1,100 places. But hey, it did better than Jimmy, the inexplicable James Stewart biopic starring the guy from Riverdale that looks like an extended joke from BoJack Horseman made by AI. This is the world we live in, but audiences weren’t up for it. Not a wonderful life for Jimmy, which only grossed $2.2 million.
Heated Rivalry is not a movie. But because it’s the unavoidable pop culture event of 2026, it’s now a cinematic experience! And fans were excited for it, as they scored a weekend gross of $1.4 million from only 945 locations.
In limited release news: Club Kid earned an impressive $390,583 from only six cinemas; I Play Rocky, Peter Farrelly’s movie about the making of Rocky (which is apparently an exciting story?), brought in $344,984 from seven places.
This coming week sees the release of How to Rob a Bank, Victorian Psycho, and some film starring that gross creep Johnny Depp.
You can check out the rest of the weekend box office numbers here.
