Your Weekend Box Office Actuals (10.10.16)

	Film	Weekend	Opening Weekend	Current Gross
	The Girl on the Train	$24.536 million	$24.536 million	$24.536 million
	Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children	$15.141 million	$28.871 million	$51.195 million
	Deepwater Horizon	$11.527 million	$20.223 million	$38.293 million
	The Magnificent Seven	$9.011 million	$34.703 million	$75.777 million
	Storks	$8.294 million	$21.311 million	$49.962 million

It may have come in a little under expectations, but The Girl on the Train still dominated the weekend, coming in first by nearly $10 million. Mixed reactions to the film and a 43 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes likely helped the slightly lower outcome of the film’s opening weekend box office. It hasn’t been receiving the near universal praise that Gone Girl had and audiences who were on the fence about seeing it could have understandably decided to opt out instead. For lead actor Emily Blunt, this opening lands square in the middle of career, under some of her biggest hits like Into the Woods and Edge of Tomorrow, but making more than other films like Sicario, Looper, and The Five-Year Engagement. Whether or not it will have legs going forward remains to be seen, especially with films like The Accountant and Jack Reacher 2 opening in the next couple of weeks and aiming at similar audiences — those who like dramas and thrillers, specifically. At least, however, The Girl on the Train, will likely make some sort of profit. It’s at $41 million worldwide on a $45 million budget so far.

Universal Pictures

The next two films landed exactly where I expected them too. Miss Peregrine dropped by 47.6 percent, which is not too terrible, although it’s a bit of a steeper drop than past Tim Burton films have suffered. Meanwhile, Deepwater Horizon fared better, only dropping 43 percent. But that’s where the good news for this film ends. It’s made $66 million on a $110 million budget and with box office intake slated to drop every subsequent week, a major profit on the film is unlikely. While it probably won’t be considered a total failure, it certainly won’t be one of Mark Wahlberg’s hardest hitting films. For the former film, however, depending on how much it makes in the coming weeks, Miss Peregrine should prove to be a solid hit for Burton, especially seeing as it’s already made nearly $100 million internationally and boasts a $145 million worldwide box office on a similar budget of $110 million. Whether it will reach the heights of Dark Shadows remains to be seen (it definitely won’t come near Alice in Wonderland, which made over $1 billion worldwide), but it’s already doing better than most of his last films.

The Magnificent Seven earned slightly more than expected and dropped 42 percent from its second to its third weekend in theaters. It’s not at $75.7 million domestically and $134 million worldwide, which is a strong showing, especially with more money to come, but not anything spectacular in a year where multiple films have crossed the $1 billion threshold and several others have come close. Still, it will become one of director’s Antoine Fuqua’s best films financially. It’s less than one million away from topping Training Day and while it may not be able to beat Olympus Has Fallen or The Equalizer, it will easily find itself in the top five of his career.

Finally, the Warner Bros. animated film Storks was able to sneak into fifth place with $8.29 million in its third. It dropped only 38 percent, even as it decreased its showings by more than 300 theaters. This reinforces the trend that animated films have smaller percentage drops from weekend to weekend. It’s now nearly at $50 million domestically and $106 million worldwide.

Fox Searchlight

Most notably Storks‘ intake was able to keep the controversy-laden The Birth of a Nation out of the top five. Ultimately it came in sixth place with a low intake of $7 million. While that amount isn’t out of the ballpark by any means, it is on the lower end of the spectrum of what Fox Searchlight, which purchased the film for an unprecedented $17.5 million at Sundance this year, was likely hoping for and expecting. Whether or not the lower number has to do with the controversy or the fact that the film, which isn’t a blockbuster by any means, only opened in 2,100 theaters (it probably has to do with all the above and then some), the fact of the matter is that it did still only open to that much. On a small budget, its financial success (or failure) isn’t the story here, it’s how the film will be remembered and what its life will be like come awards season.

Also landing in the top ten was fellow newcomer Middle School with $6.8 million and holdovers Sully ($5 million), Masterminds ($4 million), and Queen of Katwe ($1.6 million). But the real success story of the weekend is that Disney and Pixar’s Finding Dory crossed $1 billion worldwide, becoming the third movie to do so this year, joining fellow Disney films Zootopia and Captain America: Civil War. It’s also the second Pixar movie to reach $1 billion after Toy Story 3 was the first to do so.

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

Anya Crittenton | Associate Editor