Box Office: It Continues to Float, Flatliners Flatlines
It is inching closer and closer to a $300 million domestic box office haul. The Stephen King adaptation can also boast having grossed $533 million worldwide and counting. We are truly living in a new golden age of psychological thrillers.
Barring some last minute mathematical adjustments, It looks to squeak into the top of the box office for a third week with $17.3 million after slipping to #2 last weekend. Per Deadline, Tom Cruise’s American Made and the second weekend of the second Kingsman are nipping at the clown’s heels with $17 million. Even if final numbers nudge it out of the #1 slot, It continues to be the must-see movie of the moment.
That sound you hear is the New Line/Warner Bros. execs floating naked in cash as they salivate over the prospects of a sequel. Hey, maybe the studio heads will get super greedy like they did with Harry Potter and Hunger Games and divide It: Chapter 2 into two parts so they milk this for as much money as possible. Wouldn’t that be scary?
On the opposite of must-see is Flatliners, a remake nobody asked for and almost nobody watched, and those that did watch did not seem terrible impressed. Forget the Cinemascore. Sony’s remake of the 1990 Julia Roberts/Kiefer Sutherland chiller has been DOA with a 0% Rotten Tomatoes score for most of the weekend. The Ellen Page/Nina Dobrev remake only took in $5 million for the weekend.
I joked that movie news sites doing box office reports were dying to use some variation of “Flatliners Flatlines” on Friday but didn’t realize just how accurate that would be in terms of both financial failure and punny headlines. I, myself, decided to go with the obvious. “Flatliners Has No Pulse” would also have been obvious and acceptable.
Since we’re talking box office, uh, I feel like something should be mentioned even though doing so tends to stir things up… A certain controversial movie called Jeepers Creepers 3 made $1.7 million in one night this past Tuesday. Compare that to Friend Request, which made a pathetic $2.2 million for all of last weekend. Don’t shoot the messenger for pointing out the obvious, but ummm… I don’t think the boycott worked.
We’re now officially in Halloween season, and there are a number of tricks and treats opening in theaters this scary season. Happy Death Day, Jigsaw, The Snowman, Boo! 2: A Madea Halloween, Better Watch Out, My Little Pony: The Movie, Dementia 13, and Victor Crowley are just a few of the frightening offerings that will be rolling out to varying degrees to theaters in the coming weeks. Whether any of them becomes the next big breakout like Get Out and It remains to be seen.
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