Boo! 2 Scares Up First Place

Boo! 2: A Madea Halloween posted the second-lowest opening of the eight Madea films with only 2013’s A Madea Christmas posting a lower opening, but still debuted in first place last weekend (Oct. 20-22) with $21.23 million.

Boo! 2: A Madea Halloween debuted in first place at the box office over the weekend with $21.23 million.
(Photo: Chip Bergman/Lionsgate Entertainment)

Lionsgate Entertainment’s horror comedy starring Tyler Perry started 24 percent behind last year’s original Boo!: A Madea Halloween. Yet that is actually a much smaller drop than most comedy sequels recently. Neighbors 2 and Zoolander 2 opened 55 and 41 percent, respectively, behind their predecessors adjusted for inflation, while My Big Fat Greek Wedding ultimately earned only about one-quarter its predecessor’s total.

Still, Boo! 2 will exceed its modest $25 million budget less than a week into its run.

Warner Bros. Pictures’ Geostorm opened in second place with $13.71 million, far short of its large $120 million budget. The disaster epic starring Gerard Butler will be lucky to earn back even one-third of that at the domestic box office.

The movie’s weekend audience was 56 percent male and 77 percent over 25 years old, which is particularly surprising considering that high budget special-effects-laden spectacles are usually attract a younger audience. Overseas grosses are usually Hollywood’s primary revenue source on big-budget spectacles when domestic earnings fall short, but Geostorm has only earned $49.6 million overseas. To be fair, it has yet to open in China where it comes out this coming weekend.

The previous weekend’s leader Happy Death Day was unable to capitalize on the upcoming Halloween holiday, as the horror dropped 64.1 percent to $9.36 million and third place.

Sony Pictures’ firefighter drama Only the Brave opened in fifth place with $6.00 million. Starring Josh Brolin, Miles Teller and Jeff Bridges, the film earned a rave review from Vice President Mike Pence (seriously) but wasn’t able to translate to mass audience success.

Universal Pictures’ mystery drama The Snowman finished in eighth place with $3.37 million. The Michael Fassbender film, with projections already cool pre-release given its low theater count, was unable to overcome its poor reviews.

The top 10 films earned $76.40 million last weekend, 13.9 percent below the previous weekend’s $88.77 million. It is also 30.0 percent below the same weekend last year, when Boo! A Madea Halloween led with $28.50 million. The year-to-date box office is 5.0 percent behind last year.