Movie audiences sought scares over squirrels in the final weeks of summer. Annabelle: Creation easily topped the weekend box office as the animated The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature and the Brie Larson drama The Glass Castle failed to get attention from domestic crowds.
Annabelle: Creation opened to $35.0 million, already shattering its $15 million budget. The film centers around a family being terrorized by a demonic doll, and is a prequel to the 2014 horror film Annabelle. That in itself was a prequel to The Conjuring, which was released in 2013 and received its own sequel last year. That would make Annabelle: Creation the fourth film in the “Conjuring-verse” with two characters from Conjuring 2 each getting their own spinoff movies and a Conjuring 3 in development.
It may sound like overkill, but audience interest has remained high and fairly consistent over the franchise’s four-year run. The three other Conjuring movies opened in Annabelle: Creation’s ballpark between $37.1 million and $41.8 million domestically. They each ended up in the range of $256.8 million and $320.2 million worldwide on a combined $66.5 million production budget.
Annabelle: Creation doesn’t face horror competition until It opens Sep. 8 to make things sweeter.
The future isn’t as bright for the “Nut Job-verse” Open Road Films may have wanted. The Nut Job 2 opened to $8.3 million, down 57.0% from the opening of the first film from 2014. The sequel cost $40 million to make, according to Deadline. Will Arnett, Maya Rudolph, Jackie Chan, Katherine Heigl, Bobby Cannavale and Jeff Dunham voice a group of animals saving their park from being bulldozed by Mayor Bobby Moynihan. Critics bulldozed it anyway and awarded the film with an 11% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of this writing.
Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson and Naomi Watts lead the drama The Glass Castle, adapted from a memoir about a dysfunctional family living in poverty. The film opened to $4.6 million for a ninth place debut. Rotten Tomatoes compiled 90 critics’ reviews into a 49% approval rating. A budget hasn’t been reported.
The weekend wasn’t too kind for last week’s releases either. The Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey fantasy action flick The Dark Tower pulled in $7.8 million (-59.2%) while the Halle Berry thriller Kidnap took in $5.0 million (-49.1%). The Dark Tower has now amassed $53.5 million worldwide against its $60 million budget. Kidnap costs $20 million, according to Indiewire, and has grossed $19.2 million in its two weeks of domestic release.
Dunkirk brought home $10.8 million (-36.5%) in weekend four. The $100 million war film is Christopher Nolan’s tenth as a director and is soon to be his fifth highest grosser. With Dunkirk’s current $363.6 million worldwide gross, the $374.2 million total of Batman Begins is in reach. Interstellar sits in a distant fourth with $675.1 million worldwide. To make up for it, Dunkirk is about to overtake Mad Max: Fury Road’s $378.8 million gross to secure Tom Hardy’s fourth place spot behind The Revenant and Nolan’s Inception and The Dark Knight Rises.
Meanwhile, Girls Trip starring Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith and Tiffany Haddish passed $100 million worldwide this weekend. The comedy, which was made for $19 million, took in an extra $6.46 million (-43.3%) for a fifth place photo finish against The Emoji Movie. The animation took in $6.45 million (-46.3%) to bring its worldwide total to $97.0 million. Emoji was made for $50 million.
Spider-Man: Homecoming passed $700 million worldwide. Its $6.0 million (-31.9%) sixth weekend brings the worldwide total to $701.9 million. It’s the 95th highest-grossing movie ever made and the eighth largest for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Captain America: The Winter Soldier, chilling there all pretty with its $714.2 million haul, sits at number seven for now.
Atomic Blonde rounds out the top ten with $4.4 million (-45.1%) in its third weekend. Charlize Theron’s $30 million display of badassery has made $61.5 million worldwide.
Next weekend sees the release of The Hitman’s Bodyguard starring Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds and Logan Lucky with Channing Tatum, Adam Driver and Daniel Craig.
Box office information from Box Office Mojo.
