• Bad Moms takes it to the top on third-quietest 2016 weekend at cinemas
• David Brent movie performs as badly at box office as Brent does in concert
With a top 20 weekend box office total of $11.09m, this was the third-quietest weekend of the year in cinemas. The top 20 takings have only crashed below $10m once this year and that was back in February when Dirty Grandpa topped the chart with $1.49m on its second weekend.
Bad Moms took advantage of underwhelming openings from Ben-Hur and David Brent and leaped into top spot with a gross of just under $2m on its third weekend.
#1 Bad Moms $1.99m
After a fortnight ranking #2 on the box office chart, Bad Moms has climbed to top spot. Still screening on 312 screens, the movie also posted the best screen average over the weekend of $6,385. The movie snuck past $10m in total on the weekend.
#2 Suicide Squad $1.96m
After sucking up ticket sales worth $27.7m after three weekends at #1, the movie has slipped just one spot, taking close to another $2m over the weekend as its total gross moves to $30.4m, keeping it the fifth highest-grossing movie of the year so far. It also narrowly trailed Bad Moms in terms of screen average, with the weekend’s second-best result of $6,013 from 327 screens.
#3 Sausage Party $1.24m
With little compelling new competition, the animated adult outing continues to hover near the top. Another $1m plus weekend takes it total to $7m after three weekends. Screen average was good too with just over $5,500 from 224 screens.
#4 Ben-Hur $963,000
This Paramount release has set the bar pretty low in terms of poor openings. In terms of major releases (300+ screens), Ben-Hur has scored the lowest screen average of the year with just $3,050 from each of its 316 screens. That even manages to rank as a worse performance than Florence Foster Jenkins back in May with $3,328 and even Hail! Ceasar and Gods of Egypt back in March with both movies managing to do better than $4,000. The only arguably worse performance this year comes from The Choice back in February with the romantic drama earning a screen average just under $3,000 from its 205 screens. The Ben-Hur historical drama ticked one of the boxes an epic needs to achieve with Morgan Freeman in the cast, but cinema goers have assumed it doesn’t tick many others.
#5 The Shallows $898,000
The second weekend of the shark attack thriller managed to snag a second top five appearance with a screen average of $4,028 from its 223 screens.
Best of the rest: Very disappointing opening for David Brent: Life on the Road with just $379,000 from 243 screens at an average of $1,731. In terms of poor returns on opening weekends that would even beat The Choice in the race to the bottom.