Your Weekend Box Office Actuals (10.17.16)

	Film	Weekend	Opening Weekend	Current Gross
	The Accountant	$24.710 million	$24.710 million	$24.710 million
	The Girl on the Train	$12.247 million	$24.536 million	$46.831 million
	Kevin Hart: What Now?	$11.767 million	$11.767 million	$11.767 million
	Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children	$8.959 million	$28.871 million	$65.892 million
	Deepwater Horizon	$6.407 million	$20.223 million	$49.393 million

Well, it looks like some of the people I thought were going to see Kevin Hart: What Now? ended up opting for one of two thrillers playing in theaters right now: The Accountant and The Girl on the Train. The former hit it out of the park in its opening weekend, making nearly $10 million more than expected. It’s likely thanks to the star power of lead Ben Affleck and the broad appeal of Hollywood action-thrillers. It opened nearly on par with The Girl on the Train’s opening, with both films settling with middling reviews from critics and The Accountant proving to be a slightly better hit than The Girl on the Train with audiences. In one weekend, The Accountant has made a little over half its budget and even with the crowded season (Tom Cruise’s Jack Reacher 2 opens this weekend, which should take some audience members from The Accountant), it will likely come out as a success, even if it’s a soft success.

Meanwhile, The Girl on the Train fell just about 50 percent or so and made slightly more than expected, which is a good thing given its opening was softer than expected. The Emily Blunt-led thriller is nearly to $80 million worldwide and while not a total flop (especially on the financial front given its $45 million budget), it certainly hasn’t proven to be the smash success, similar to Gone Girl, Universal was hoping for. One thing that likely won’t come out The Girl on the Train’s average performance is a change in Blunt’s career. Many reviews praise her performance, if not the film itself, and she’s already proven herself time and time again as a solid performer and will continue to do so.

Universal Pictures

While What Now? may have opened less than predicted, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t successful. Its $11.7 million opening is one of the best openings for a stand-up comedy film of all time and the film has been earning great reviews from critics and audiences alike. Still, Hart’s last comedy film, Let Me Explain, opened to $17.4 million, which is a bit of a difference. Granted, that was over five days, but in only 876 theaters, compared to this film’s debut in 2,567 theaters. Still, it’s a bona fide success for a stand-up film and this could start paving the way for other stand-up specials to hit the big screen.

Finally, both Miss Peregrine and Deepwater opened around where they were expected to open. The former, a Tim Burton live-action adaptation, is now nearing $200 million, while the Mark Wahlberg-led disaster film can only boast $86 million worldwide. Both films have a budget of $110 million, have been open for three weeks, and the difference is astonishing. Lionsgate could very well be writing Deepwater off as I write this.

Fox Searchlight

Finishing out the top ten for the weekend is Storks with $5.6 million, The Magnificent Seven with $5.2 million, Middle School with $4.3 million, Sully hanging strong with $2.8 million, and The Birth of a Nation with $2.7 million. Antoine Fuqua’s western remake, The Magnificent Seven, now has $150 million worldwide, which is respectable, if not astounding, and Clint Eastwood’s real-life film Sully is going strong at $175 million worldwide. While all eyes were once on Birth, the film now seems little more than a whisper. It’s made $12 million domestically and is slowing rapidly. From its first weekend to its second it dropped 60 percent and will only continue to do so.

There are four films opening in wide release this upcoming weekend — Jack Reacher 2, Boo! A Madea Halloween, Keeping Up with the Joneses, and Ouija 2 — and they’ll likely shake things up.

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

Anya Crittenton | Associate Editor