It was another quiet weekend at the box office with total tickets sales of the top 20 movie returning $10.26m, down 2% on the previous weekend. This weekend now becomes the second-lowest gross of the year after the February weekend that did just under $10m.
Despite the last five weeks all hovering around $10m or slightly better, Val Morgan has reported box office is at an all-time high with 2016 crossing the $1b mark – a 5% increase on last year.
October has also been record breaking, delivering $93m at the box office to become the biggest October ever, stealing the title from 2013’s $81.4m – a 15% uplift. The big month was driven by a range of titles including The Girl on the Train ($15m), Jack Reacher: Never Go Back ($6m), Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children ($11m), The Magnificent Seven ($8.3m), Doctor Strange’s massive opening weekend ($6.5m) and the biggest September release of all time, The Secret Life of Pets ($30m).
#1 Doctor Strange $2.57m
A third week on top for the Benedict Cumberbatch movie which shed 104 screens to 454 with a screen average of $5,676. The movie has a total to-date of $16.05m.
#2 Arrival $2.17m
The first of two new Amy Adams movies to find a spot in the top five. The SF thriller seems it could have been opened by Roadshow on more screens – it premiered on 268 screens with the weekend’s best screen average of $8,104.
#3 Hacksaw Ridge $1.31m
The Mel Gibson-directed war movie drops one spot in its second weekend as total earn creeps just over $3.5m. The film was the best over the weekend at holding its revenue week-on-week with takings down 18% from its opening weekend.
#4 The Accountant $1.5m
The Ben Affleck movie also dropped one spot after opening with $1.57m last week, with taking down 26% on its second weekend.
#5 Nocturnal Animals $607,000
This Amy Adams sounds like a very narrowly targeted arthouse movie and its takings reflect something along those lines. Remarkably the movie opened on 238 screens, only 30 fewer than Arrival did, with a screen average on $2,553, the lowest in the top five.