A new horror film from Paramount put a grin on moviegoers’ faces this weekend.
Parker Finn‘s debut feature Smile scared up a strong $22 million from 3,645 theaters to top the weekend chart. The horror pic started off with $8.2 million on theaters on Friday — including $2 million in previews. To boot, it cost just $17 million to make.
From Paramount Players and Temple Hill, Smile is about a therapist (Sosie Bacon) who meets a graduate student (Caitlin Stasey) who recently witnessed a gruesome suicide. Kyle Gallner, Robin Weigert and Kal Penn co-star.
Nearly 70 percent of the audience was between ages 18-34. The movie also played to an ethnically diverse audience (40 percent Caucasian, 32 percent Latino, 16 percent Black and 12 percent Asian/Other), according to PostTrak.
“Parker Finn’s disquieting debut Smile transforms a congenial gesture into a threat. Smiles — warm and inviting by nature — mask deeper, more troubling intentions in this harrowing film about a demonic spirit that latches on to its victims’ traumas. The adage about grinning through hard times here takes on a sinister tone,” writes The Hollywood Reporter critic Lovia Gyarkye.
Elsewhere, Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling fell off steeply in its sophomore outing. The New Line film earned $2.4 million on Friday from 4,121 locations for a $7.3 million weekend, a 62 percent drop and putting the movie’s 10-day domestic total at $32.8 million.
Tri-Star’s The Woman King came in No. 3 with $7 million from 3,504 cinemas — down just 36 percent — in its third weekend for a domestic cume nearing $47 million.
One film that isn’t smiling is Universal and Nicholas Stoller’s high-profile Bros, the first gay romantic comedy from a major Hollywood studio (Universal has been widely lauded for taking on the project). The movie, which cost a modest $22 million to make, opened behind already modest expectations with $4.8 million from 3,350 theaters after earning $1.8 million on Friday.
Starring Billy Eichner, Bros was embraced by critics following its world premiere at the 2022 Toronto Film Festival. It presently boasts a glowing 95 percent critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences agreed, giving it an A CinemaScore.
THR‘s review was slightly more mixed. “And certainly the dearth of mainstream/studio gay rom-coms makes one want to embrace Bros for the representational significance alone,” wrote John DeFore. “But was it wrong to hope for something a little stranger?”
Bros‘ top 10 markets were all in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, while it is underperforming in much of the middle of the country and the south, outside of bigger cities including Chicago.
The rerelease of Avatar continues to please and earned $4.7 million from 1,860 theaters for a 10-day domestic total of $18.1 million and $58.1 million globally.
The big upset of the weekend was the sweeping Indian epic PS-1: Ponniyan Selvan Part One, which is eyeing a better-than-expected $4.1 million from only 500 locations in the U.S. The Tamil-language film, from what’s known as Tollywood, was dubbed in four other Indian languages. Nearly 30 percent of its earnings came from Imax screens.
Oct. 1, 8:15 a.m. Updated with revised weekend estimates.
Oct. 2, 7:30 a.m. Updated with revised weekend estimates.
