Shawn Robbins: Celebs Rumors

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” and Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” with the hope that the potent combination of escapism and nostalgia would invigorate the box office. Instead, both films are among the summer’s most baffling disappointments, and much of that has to do with their outsized budgets.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” Universal and Blumhouse‘s terrifying adaptation of the popular video game, made a killing in its box office debut with $78 million in North America and $130 million globally. For a $20 million-budgeted horror film that landed simultaneously on streaming (in this case, the NBCUniversal-owned service Peacock), these ticket sales would have been significant by the end of its theatrical run. In just three days of release, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” has already surpassed the entire global haul of 2022’s “Halloween Ends” ($104 million) and will soon overtake 2021’s “Halloween Kills” ($133 million) — which previously ranked as the biggest hybrid releases from Universal and Peacock.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Without Taylor Swift and Martin Scorsese, the October box office would have been a ghost town long before Halloween hit. It was thanks to two unconventional releases — “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” and “Killers of the Flower Moon,” one distributed by an exhibitor and the other backed by a major streaming service — that anyone went to the movies at all. It may get worse before it gets better.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Long live the new box office queen. After selling out stadiums across the country, Taylor Swift is filling movie theaters with “The Eras Tour” concert film, which ignited to estimates of $95 million to $97 million over the weekend. Studios typically report a firmer number at this point, but “without clear comparisons, Sunday box office projections remain a range,” the film’s official distributor AMC Theatres said in a note to press.

“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” has been burning off the box office, and has just pushed Disney to a big international milestone.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “Creed III” delivered a powerful box office knockout with its $58.6 million domestic debut, clobbering expectations and franchise records in the process. And there’s more good news for struggling theater owners starved for compelling content. It looks like the good fortune will continue in March with “Scream VI” (March 10), “Shazam: Fury of the Gods” (March 17), “John Wick: Chapter 4” (March 24) and “Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” (March 31). There’s at least one major release every weekend through the rest of the month, offering the kind of stability that’s been desperately missing during the great box office reset.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter At the box office, horror movies have a tendency to run out of steam faster than a teenager being chased through the woods by a masked killer. Even the most successful scary stories are known to earn the bulk of their money in the first weekend of release. Yet “Smile” and “Barbarian,” two recent big-screen thrillers, have defied conventional wisdom by impressively sticking around in theaters after opening weekend. Ticket sales for “Smile,” in particular, nominally declined in between its first and second weekend of release, a sign of exceptionally positive word-of-mouth. Over the weekend, Paramount’s “Smile” retained the No. 1 spot in North America with $18 million, sliding just 18% from its $22 million start. At the international box office, something even crazier happened: “Smile” actually improved on its debut by 31%, bringing in $19.1 million in its second weekend. And it continues to flex during the week, adding $2.6 million domestically on Monday. After only 12 days in theaters, the movie is already nearing the coveted $100 million mark. It’s a bloody-good result for the $17 million-budgeted “Smile.”

Sony and Paramount have been flexing their muscles at the box office lately with a wide range of offerings. The two studios are responsible for seven of the 10 highest-grossing films of 2022 and currently represent more than 46% of all domestic revenues, according to Comscore.