| Film | Weekend | Opening Weekend | Current Gross | |
 |
It | $123.4m | $123.4m | $123.4m |
 |
Home Again | $8.6m | $8.6m | $8.6m |
 |
The Hitman’s Bodyguard | $4.8m | $21.4m | $64.8m |
 |
Annabelle: Creation | $4m | $35m | $96.3m |
 |
Wind River | $3.1m | $160,000 | $24.9m |
Warner Bros.
While everyone in Toronto was shuffling from one TIFF screening to the next and Florida was preparing for a Category 4 hurricane, the rest of the country was flocking to theaters to show studios that horror is still a massive draw. They also showed Hollywood that they weren’t ready to give up on Stephen King after this summer’s disastrous The Dark Tower adaptation.
Directed by Andy Muschietti (Mama), the theatrical feature version of King’s It came into the weekend being one of the most viewed online trailers and with impressive advance presales. Warner Bros. opened the movie in 4,103 theaters Friday after the typical previews on Thursday night where it scored $13.5 million , better than last year’s Deadpool. It went on to gross $51 million on Friday, which for perspective, actually beats the Sept. opening record of Adam Sandler’s Hotel Transylvania 2 in just a single day.
On Sunday, the estimate for the Stephen King adaptation was $117.1 over its first weekend, but revised Monday numbers are more than $123 million. Not only does that set a new Sept. opening weekend record, but it’s also the biggest opening for a horror movie ever! The previous record holder was Ridley Scott’s Hannibal, the prequel to the Oscar-winning The Silence of the Lambs. That opened with $58 million in 2001. It also scoared the second highest opening for an R-rated movie after last year’s Deadpool, which itself was fairly impressive.
For a little perspective, It made more by itself this weekend than every single movie released the weekends of Aug. 4, Aug. 11, Aug. 18, Aug. 25 and over Labor Day made combined. That’s on top of Warner Bros’ impressive summer victories with Wonder Woman and Dunkirk, so they’re already off to a good start this fall with Justice League on the way.
The other significant wide release was the Reese Witherspoon dramedy Home Again, released by Open Road Films. It’s Witherspoon’s first live action release in over two years, when her action-comedy Hot Pursuit opened with $13 million. Home Again didn’t fare as well with an estimated $8.6 million in 2,941 theaters, averaging less than $3,000 per site, which isn’t good but is more typical for the first weekend following Labor Day.
Lionsgate’s The Hitman’s Bodyguard settled into third place after three weeks at #1 with $4.8 million and nearly $65 million gross, followed by New Line’s other horror release, Annabelle: Creation, which is edging its way to $100 million with another $4 million this weekend. But honestly, when It is doing that in a single weekend, that’s just gravy in one of Warner Bros’ best summers in many years.
Wind River fell to fifth place with $3.1 million and the animated Leap! was sixth with $2.4 million. Wind River has grossed $24.9 million domestically to Leap‘s $15.8 million.
A rather impressive milestone was set by Sony’s Spider-Man: Homecoming this weekend, as it became the first movie for the studio in 20 years to remain in the Top 10 for ten weeks. The last one to do that was Men in Black in 1997 and the next movie to have that sort of staying power was Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man in 2002 with eight weeks. It’s further proof that former chairperson Amy Pascal made a wise decision to team with Marvel Studios for Spidey’s latest adventure. It has grossed $328 million domestically and almost $500 million overseas, surpassing the worldwide gross of Sam Raimi’s 2002 Spider-Man.
The drama 9/11 opened in 425 theaters on Friday but only grossed $170,000 or $400 per theater, while the Bollywood film Poster Boys grossed $51,000 in 50 theaters.
There weren’t many significant limited releases with IFC Films’ JD Salinger drama Rebel in the Rye taking in $38,000 in four theaters in New York and L.A.
On Thursday, we’ll have the preview for the upcoming weekend where CBS Films’ American Assassin will take on Darren Aronofsky’s mother!
(Source: boxofficemojo.com. Figures represent estimated numbers at time of writing, and they may change.)
Edward Douglas | East Coast Editor
