Box Office: It sets record for biggest-ever September opening

Revenue recovery with Stephen King horror adaptation It over $7m

A horror franchise has now topped the box office chart for three of the past five weeks. The genre is behind a massive turnaround in ticket sales over the past few days with the total earn from the top 20 movies up 44% weekend-on-weekend to $12.27m. For the past few weeks cinemas have been wondering where the next hit would come from.

August and the start of September have been down for the sector with the first two weekends of August just over $10m, followed by three weekends under $9m including a record low of $7.8m.

#1 It $7.46m

The adaptation of a Stephen King novel accounted for over 60% of the dollars earned by the top 20 movies. The movie has set a record for the biggest-ever September opening. It is also the biggest-ever opening weekend for a horror movie. The Warner Bros release opened on 548 screens with a screen average of $13,626.

It was the biggest opening since Spider-Man: Homecoming in early July with $10.13m. It also had the best screen average since that super hero release and it was also the biggest opening since then on close to 550 screens – Spider-Man: Homecoming opened on 634 screens with a screen average of just on $16,000.

The horror genre has helped the trade through the winter months with Annabelle: Creation topping the chart for two weeks last month. (That film sits at #9 this week with $7.06m to-date.)

#2 The Hitman’s Bodyguard $1.25m

Last week’s chart champ was down 46% this week as the screen average settled to $4,711 after $7,445 the previous weekend. It shed 46 screens to 267 and has a screen gross to-date of $4.97m.

#3 Girls Trip $954,000

The revenue drop was the smallest of the top five movies this week – 27%. Screen numbers were down from 282 to 237 with a gross to-date of $2.87m.

#4 American Made $781,000

Weekend three saw the dollars dry up to the tune of 49%, with screens down 19 to 300. Screen average was just over $2,600 with a total earn so far of $5.67m

#5 Dunkirk $258,000

The fact that Dunkirk was able to make the top five on just over quarter of a million dollars shows how much money the #1 movie sucked out of the audience. $258,000 is the smallest amount of money a movie at #5 has taken all year. Normally that much wouldn’t even score you a place in the top 10. However, that aside, Dunkirk remains a great performer with $22.97m in the coffers after eight weeks as it remains on 163 screens, down from 221 the previous weekend.

 

Outside the top 5: Ali’s Wedding opened last week at #8 on the chart with $228,000 from just 51 screens at $4,469 per screen. This week that translated to $191,836 with a revenue drop of 16%. The screen average of $3,448 is better than the three movies above it on the chart that are showing on more screens.

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