Paramount and Temple Hill are grinning widely.
Their new movie, Smile 2, won the domestic box office race with an estimated $23 million from 3,619 theaters, including Imax and other premium large-format screens. That would put the film’s debut just ahead of the first Smile, a sleeper hit that opened to $22.6 million in late September 2022 on its way to grossing more than $217 million worldwide against a $17 million budget.
Overseas, the sequel likewise took in $23 million.
With writer and director Parker Finn returning, the sequel follows a malevolent spirit that jumps hosts, who then wear a diabolical grin. This time, the darkness infects a troubled pop star (Naomi Scott) and feeds off of her ample trauma, according to The Hollywood Reporter‘s review of the film. Scott stars opposite Lukas Gage, Rosemarie DeWitt and Miles Gutierrez-Riley. The sequel was budgeted at $28 million, a modest sum for a major studio film.
Smile 2 earned a B CinemaScore from audiences, compared to the B- the first film received. It also had to fend off competition from holdover slasher pic Terrifier 3, which opened to $18.9 million last weekend despite being unrated and doing zero TV ads.
Terrifier 3, from Cineverse, came in third place this weekend with just north of $9 million from 2,762 cinemas _ a solid hold that puts its domestic total at roughly $36 million against a $2 million production budget.
Some speculate that DreamWorks/Universal’s The Wild Robot is benefiting from Terrifier 3 since theaters won’t let anyone under 17 see the latter if not accompanied by an adult. (Exhibitors are treating it like an R-rated movie.) Rival studios suspect teens are buying tickets to see Wild Robot and then sneaking into Terrifier 3 (the same could also be true for the R-rated Smile 2).
Whatever the case, Wild Robot, which is also available in the home via premium VOD, has bragging rights to holding second place in its fourth weekend, as it crossed the $100 million mark domestically after earning another $10 million from 3,829 cinemas, for a domestic tally of $101.7 million through Sunday and $196 million globally.
John Crowley’s romantic drama We Live in Time made news by climbing up the chart to fifth place after it platformed into 985 theaters, following an opening in only a handful of cities last weekend. The Andrew Garfield-Florence Pugh drama earned $4.2 million from 985 locations. A24 will expand We Live in Time nationwide next weekend.
The big headline at the awards box office was Sean Baker’s Anora, which opened across six theatres in New York and Los Angeles. The specialty movie from Neon follows a sex worker who falls for a Russian oligarch’s son and won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
Anora posted an estimated per-theater average of $90,000, the best showing since Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City last year and among the top five of the past five years.
“Baker is a singular director who truly understands the power of the theatrical experience and how important it is for films to be seen in the theater. With Mikey Madison in her unparalleled performance as Anora, and the film’s strong awards potential, there’s no doubt it will continue to captivate a broad audience as we move into the fall,” said Neon distribution chief Elissa Federoff.
Last weekend, a handful of rival Oscar contenders, including Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night, didn’t fare so well when opting to open nationwide over a platform release as they struggled to make up much ground in their sophomore outings. Piece By Piece, the Pharrell Williams biographical animated feature, made in tandem with LEGO, came in seventh with $2.1 million for a domestic total of $7.6 million. The Focus Features release fell 45 percent, while Saturday Night came in ninth place after declining 47 percent to $1.8 million for a domestic cume of $7.6 million. And the anti-Donald Trump feature The Apprentice tumbled 60 percent to 13th place with a gross of $680,000 for a domestic cume of $3.3 million.
Among holdovers from the major studios, Deadpool & Wolverine enjoyed yet another milestone as it nears the end of its theatrical run. Over the weekend, the threequel passed Barbie at the domestic box office to rank No. 12 on the list of all-time top-grossing films with an estimated $636.3 million in ticket sales, versus $636.2 million for Barbie, not adjusted for inflation.
Conversely, rival comic book movie Joker: Folie à Deux continued to struggle, finishing its third weekend with a domestic tally of $56.4 million and $192 million globally, including a China opening of $5.9 million.
Oct. 20, 8:00 a.m.: Updated with revised estimates.
Oct. 21, 10 a.m.: Updated with additional domestic and foreign grosses.
This story was originally published Oct. 20 at 9:35 a.m.
