A warm reception for a cool character

The box office has been warming up the past few weeks with quality efforts drawing respectable numbers, and with a slight lull one studio found a crevasse in the schedule and managed to earn a decent return. Many are looking ahead to next week when “Joker”, amid all of its social-concern hype, gets released, but in the meantime here is the windfall from this weekend.

1. ABOMINABLE – $20.86 Million

Universal/Dreamworks combined to find this slot in the calendar for a family-oriented film as studios are holding back on adult options in light of “Joker” expected to hog all the attention.The snowman managed a decent enough performance as a result. This slightly beat most predictions though it does lag slightly behind the performance of last year’s “Smallfoot”, another yeti-based animated film that opened with $23 million. The studios shared the production cost with the Chinese animation studio Pearl so there is some expected international boost that looks to bring this to profitability.

2.  DOWNTON ABBEY – $14.5m
Strong weekday numbers and a respectable drop of -53% has this British drama based on the hit TV series already taking in close to $60 million.

3. HUSTLERS – $11.47m
With newer films dropping lower this stripper heist film is showing serious longevity. A -30% dip in week three means this will have legs for quite a few more weeks, and a $100 million total is basically assured by this point.

4. IT: CHAPTER TWO – $10.4m
Has taken in close to a very impressive $200 million, but in comparison to the original film at this stage this sequel is lagging by $100 million.

5. AD ASTRA – $10.14m
The Brad Pitt space epic had a decent second frame falling only -46%, but it needed a far better opening, and the reliance now will be on a hefty foreign box office to take this to profits.

6. RAMBO: LAST BLOOD – $8.57m
To this point it is slightly outpacing the last entry in the “Rambo” franchise, but that is a severely qualified success. The previous film was released 11 years ago, and on nearly 1,000 fewer screens.

7. JUDY – $3.09m
Renee Zellwegger is a bit of a surprise casting choice for a biopic about the life of Judy Garland, but the choice seems to be paying off. This has landed in the top-10 despite playing on a scant few screens – 461. The $6,706 screen average was easily the highest of any movie this week. Roadside Attractions will certainly be exPanding this release in the coming weeks.

8. GOOD BOYS – $2.01M
The kids are starting to gradually shed screens, but the $80 million haul after 7 weeks is making Universal happy.

9. THE LION KING – $1.6m
Oh yea, it is still lingering after the entire summer.

10. ANGEL HAS FALLEN – $1.53m
Gerard Butler is about to leave the building…