Your Weekend Box Office Actuals (09.26.16)

	Film	Weekend	Opening Weekend	Current Gross
	The Magnificent Seven	$34.703 million	$34.703 million	$34.703 million
	Storks	$21.311 million	$21.311 million	$21.311 million
	Sully	$13.537 million	$35.028 million	$92.100 million
	Bridget Jones’s Baby	$4.656 million	$8.571 million	$16.594 million
	Snowden	$4.056 million	$8.000 million	$15.050 million

While the numbers might have ended up a little off, the basic lineup of films over the weekend was exactly as predicted. The Magnificent Seven, the new remake from director Antoine Fuqua, opened to a respectable $34.7 million, especially against a budget of $90 million. Although Sully, which opened to one million more, only just crossed the $90 million mark so depending on how The Magnificent Seven does overseas, it could have more of a challenge to make a big profit than the studios expected. Still, it’s a career-best opening for Fuqua (though not for lead actor Denzel Washington, which some theorized it could be) and proves the audiences like collaborations between him and Washington (especially if you throw Chris Pratt into the mix). Nearly every movie will be facing stiff competition week-after-week as we get into the fall/winter onslaught of new movies and Seven is no exception. It won’t be able to stay on top for much longer, probably not even another week, but at least it was able to have this first hurrah.

As expected, with virtually no competition in the field of family entertainment, Storks was able to swoop in to second place. While it wasn’t able to come close to The LEGO Movie’s opening of $69 million, it’s only the second movie under the new banner of Warner Animation Group and is miles ahead of the titles released as Warner Bros. Feature Animation, so it’s certainly not a failure. Plus, it’s already to $40 million worldwide so its $70 million budget isn’t so scary when you think of it that way. But it’s not going to be making any headlines the way Zootopia, Finding Dory, or Secret Life of Pets did. Plus, with Queen of Katwe and Tim Burton’s Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children opening in wide release this week, soon it will have much more family competition and so this is likely the best it’s ever going to do at the box office.

Warner Animation Group

The next three are repeats in the top five and all made about what they were expected to. As mentioned above, Sully crossed the $90 million mark domestically and is sitting on $127 million worldwide. It’s definitely made a profit on its $60 million budget and is a solid hit for both director Clint Eastwood and star Tom Hanks. It’s also an excellent sign that it’s dropped less than 40 percent each subsequent weekend (it also helped that it opened in an extra 430 theaters this weekend).

While Bridget Jones’s Baby hasn’t been able to make an impression in the States so far as its predecessors, it has made $67 million in foreign box office sales and historically, this is where this franchise has truly succeeded. Both Bridget Jones’s Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason made over $200 million internationally and while this third outing might not make as much overall, it’s still doing exceptionally well and topping foreign charts. It helps that its budget was only $35 million and so it’s a sure profit-maker when foreign sales are taken into account. Its weak performance in the U.S. might be drawn to the fact that it’s been over ten years since Edge of Reason and while Bridget is beloved overseas, especially in, of course, the U.K., American audiences might have already moved on for the most part.

Universal Pictures

Finally, Snowden beat out Blair Witch by only $3,000 but it was still enough to land at position number five and prove that audiences are already done with the surprise sequel to The Blair Witch Project. Snowden has made $15 million so far and hasn’t opened overseas so it’s still not that big of a story. Plus, it hasn’t been nearly as prevalent in headlines for its content as some people might have expected. Instead, Snowden seems to be playing more ambivalently across the country. It fell nearly 50 percent from week one to week two, still playing in 2,443 theaters, and after this week, it will likely just drift quietly away from people consciouses, which might not be quite the bang director Oliver Stone was looking for, but it’s better than the opposite.

The rest of the top ten are always movies you’ve heard time and time again the past several weeks (Don’t Breathe, Suicide Squad, etc.) and there are no big surprises. However, that will change soon as big movies are set to be opening every week in the next several months and the box office charts should start to really change week-to-week, which will be welcome. This coming weekend, Queen of Katwe, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Deepwater Horizon, and Masterminds are all opening in wide release and they’ll knock at least a few of these down some pegs.

(Source: boxoffice.com, boxofficemojo.com. Figures represent numbers at time of writing, and may have changed.)

Anya Crittenton | Associate Editor