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Linda Hamilton Getty.jpg

Box Office Report: I'll Be Back. Maybe. Probably Not

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | November 3, 2019 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | November 3, 2019 |


Linda Hamilton Getty.jpg

Terminator: Dark Fate may have opened at the top of the box office this weekend but it’s doubtful Paramount will be looking at that $29 million gross with unbridled joy. A movie this big and this expensive, based on such an iconic property, should be doing far better than this, but in a year where the box office has sucked unless you’re Disney or the Joker, this is probably what we all should have expected.

Harriet, Kasi Lemmons’s biopic of Harriet Tubman, opened at number four with around $12 million. Reviews have been mixed to strong but that A+ on Cinemascore suggests a possibility for strong word-of-mouth that could really help it in the long run.

It certainly fared better than Motherless Brooklyn. Bless you, Edward Norton. You spent 20 years trying to make this passion project happen. Warner Bros. won’t be delighted by that paltry $3.65 million opening weekend but it’s hard to imagine who the perceived wide audience for this thing was. The marketing alone showed how this movie wasn’t exactly an easy sell or one with general appeal.

Warner Bros. can take solace in Joker, at least. It’s at number two, ahead of Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, and its $13.9 million weekend brings its domestic gross to a smidge under $300 million. It’s now taken in over $934 million worldwide, making it by far and away the highest-grossing R-rated movie ever. It’s super close to a billion and it may get there by this time next week, doing so without ever screening in China. That’s certainly nothing to sneeze at.

The really fascinating conversations are happening in the indie releases. Parasite expanded to 461 theaters and took in $2.63 million, while Jojo Rabbit grossed $2.4 million from 256 cinemas. Expansion wasn’t so hot for The Lighthouse, which moved into 978 theaters but only managed $2 million, even on a Halloween weekend.

This coming week sees the release of Roland Emmerich’s Midway, seasonal rom-com Last Christmas, and Doctor Sleep, the follow-up to The Shining.

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

What movies did you watch this weekend? Let us know in the comments.



Header Image Source: Getty Images