Author: Alex Fisch

Last week’s headliner, Eternals, hauled in another $27.5M in its sophomore weekend – ahead of the $16.4M weekend from Paramount’s new film Clifford the Big Red Dog, and leading the charts of this $71.3M weekend. Despite the mixed word-of-mouth, the Marvel superhero epic dropped just -61% from its debut.

November starts off strong with a $109M weekend headlined by the new release from Disney’s Marvel Studios: Eternals. The star-studded superhero movie and third entry in Marvel’s “Phase Four” landed a $71M debut – the fourth highest open of the year behind Venom, Black Widow, and Shang-Chi. While coming to the theater was a no-brainer for the loyal MCU fanbase, those outside the bubble may have hesitated due to the “rotten” rating on RottenTomatoes.

The curtains close on October with a final $64.7M weekend – sweetening the pot of the calendar month to $638M. Moviegoers come back to theaters for titles that excite them, and October had plenty on offer: Venom Let There Be Carnage, No Time to Die, Halloween Kills, and Dune.

Warner Bros. unearthed a gem with Dune, an ambitious sci-fi tale adapted for the big screen by Director Denis Villeneuve. Digging up $40.1M at the box office, Dune beat predictions of $30-$35 million and sets the three-day record for Warner Bros.

Before the year’s biggest tentpole Spider-Man: No Way Home hits the big screen, Disney launched a film of a very different flavor this weekend. Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story aimed to fill the calm before the storm – leveraging the director’s pedigree, positive reviews, a beloved narrative, and growing Oscar buzz to get moviegoers out of their homes.

No Time to Die was one of two films (the other being Trolls World Tour) that were the first to be delayed during the pandemic. Originally slated for April 10 of last year, Daniel Craig’s swan song and the 25th chapter in the long-running 007 movie franchise was locked away by MGM studios until the state of the pandemic improved.

Moviegoing was never going to die – to state the obvious: a good movie will always convince people to put down the remote and travel to the theater. That is especially true if said movie is already part of a popular IP. Enter Venom: Let There Be Carnage, the sequel to the Sony/Marvel 2018 hit which delivers a record-breaking $90.1M this weekend.

The final weekend in September’s box-office chart sees Shang-Chi in the lead for the fourth weekend in a row – the first film to pull off a four-peat since last year’s Tenet. Both films opened over Labor Day weekend and faced little-to-no competition throughout the month. Adding $13.3M over this past weekend, Shang-Chi’s total of $196.5M jumps over Black Widow’s $183.2M record to become this year’s highest-grossing film.

For the third weekend in a row, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings leads the box-office. The Marvel Studios hit from Disney adds another $21.7M to its impressive run, including the all-time Labor Day weekend record, the third highest opening & second weekend in September ever, and the fastest climb to $100M during this pandemic.

Shang-Chi nabs an easy victory at the box-office with a sophomore weekend estimate of $35.8M, bringing its running total to $145.6M. That is the third biggest weekend for a September release since the two It movies. The latest Marvel superhero previously surpassed expectations with a record-shattering Labor Day four-day debut of $94.7M.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings – pronounced “SHONG-chee” by the way – completely blew past the record for Labor Day openings with a four-day gross of $90M+. After fourteen years, 2007’s Halloween Labor Day open of $30M has been surpassed and tripled – proving once again that a great movie can find success even outside of “peak moviegoing seasons”.