'Bullet Train,' 'Maverick' lead slowest box office in six months
Bullet Train (NYSE:SONY) repeated as the box office leader on a weekend that was unsurprisingly the slowest since February.
That came on a weekend with next to no wide releases of great interest, calling a definitive end to the summer movie season that ushered in a few nine-figure hits.
Bullet Train (SONY) shed a typical 55% of business to draw $13.4M. That brought its cumulative domestic gross to $54.5M, with a worldwide total of $114.5M.
Bullet Train's $13.4M was an unusually big chunk of the entire industry's $66.4M domestic take for the weekend. How slow was it? One of the weekend's wide releases, body-swapping dramedy Mack & Rita (Gravitas Premiere), drew a total $1.095M across 1,930 screens - barely outperforming a 40-year-old film, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (CMCSA), which drew $1.07M over the weekend in a return to 389 IMAX (NYSE:IMAX) screens.
How slow? Enough that a three-month-old film took advantage and returned to second place. Top Gun: Maverick's (NASDAQ:PARA) (PARAA) $7.1M over the weekend was only bested by Bullet Train, and that brought 2022's top-grossing movie to a cumulative $673.7M domestic, and $1.378B worldwide.
Behind those two films were some scraps for recent releases: DC League of Super-Pets (WBD) drew $7M to land at $58.2M cumulative; Thor: Love and Thunder (DIS) grossed $5.4M for a run total of $325.5M; and Nope (CMCSA) added another $5.4M to bring its cumulative total to $107.6M.
Perhaps bracing for hibernation until October are exhibitors: AMC Entertainment (NYSE:AMC); Cineworld (OTCPK:CNNWF); Cinemark (CNK); (IMAX); Marcus (MCS); Reading International (RDI); Cineplex (CGX:CA); National CineMedia (NCMI).