There was literally something for everyone this fall weekend. If your taste is for drama, adventure, comedy, horror or animated films, there was something for you to see this weekend. But only one film could be on top – and that was, not surprisingly, Sony Animation’s "Hotel Transylvania 2."
The first "Hotel Transylvania," which came out in 2012, opened with $42 million eventually winding up with $148 million million domestically. But the sequel opened even bigger this weekend with $47.5 million, making it the biggest Sept opening ever for any film. And it couldn’t come at a better time for Sony Pictures since, so far, 2015 has been one really lousy year for the studio..But then again, their output this year has been very pretty lame with non-starters such as "Aloha," "Chappie," "Rickie and Flash" and "Pixels," all b.o. losers.
With the exception of the modestly budgeted $13 million "The Perfect Guy," which will make an equally modest $50 million, you have to go back to last fall with "Fury" and "The Equalizer" to find any Sony films that made any money at the box office. No doubt the studio is hoping that their upcoming releases of "The Night Before," "The Walk" and "Concussion" with Will Smith (and his Hollywood "African" accent) will fare better at the box office.
Last week’s No. 1, "Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials" came in third this weekend with a 53% drop, earning $14 million, meanwhile "Everest" expanded from 545 IMAX screens to a wider release to just over 3000 regular screens, for a $13 million weekend take.
Coming in second with $18.2 million was the comedy "The Intern" with Robert DeNiro and Anne Hathaway, directed by Nancy Meyers, who makes those movies that you and everyone else you know wouldn’t be caught dead watching, or even heard of, and yet somehow wind-up making a ton.of money. In fact, her films have made over $550 million domestically, making her the most successful female film director ever.
But did you see "It’s Complicated," "What Women Wan,t" or "Something’s Got to Give"? See what I mean? Did you see them, or have you even heard of them? Yet, all three films made well over $100 million at the box office ("What Women Want" did over $180 million domestically), and even her lowest grossing film, "The Holiday," another one of the those "when did that come out?" movies, made over $63 million.
So her latest film, with its reported modest – by Hollywood studio standards – budget of $35 million, should do pretty well for Warners, continuing her streak of b.o. hits.
For horror fans, there was Eli Roth’s white-people-being-eaten-alive-by-savage-jungle-cannibals horror film "The Green Inferno," which was held up for release for a year due to legal complications involving the producers and the film’s original distributor. Now being released by a brand new distributor, High Top Releasing, the film, which is Roth’s revamping of Ruggero Deodato’s notorious 1979 gorefest "Cannibal Holocaust" ("The one that goes all the way!" as the film’s ad said), didn’t do well, coming in at 9th place, with $3.5 million on over 1500 screens.
And the drug cartel thriller "Sicario" expanded wider from last week’s 6 screens to 53 screens, coming in at 10th place, with $1.7 million, and for the second week in a row, the highest per screen average of any film currently in release.
1) Hotel Transylvania 2 Sony $47,500,000
2) The Intern WB $18,225,000 Total: $18,225,000
3) Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials Fox $14,000,000 Total: $51,685,572
4) Everest Uni. $13,090,000 Total:$23,129,805
5) Black Mass WB $11,510,000 Total: $42,608,179
6) The Visit Uni. $6,750,000 -Total: $52,260,580
7) The Perfect Guy SGem $4,750,000 – Total: $48,871,135
8) War Room TriS $4,275,000 -Total: $55,999,681
9) The Green Inferno HTR $3,494,000
10) Sicario LGF $1,770,000 Total: $2,350,594
11) A Walk in the Woods BG $1,090,000 Total: $27,310,374
12) Pawn Sacrifice BST $1,020,979 Total: $1,315,410