A record-breaking Thanksgiving frame is lifting all boats, tentpoles the most evident, with boom, boom, boom for Moana 2, Wicked and Gladiator II. Some 30 million moviegoers went to see one of these. In the weird post-Covid shift, tentpoles can slay, and indies can disappear. This weekend, however, they didn’t. Audiences showed decent specialty support
Conclave
After a sluggish start, Venom: The Last Dance gained ground in its second weekend. The Sony comic book movie declined a franchise-low 49 percent to $26.1 million from 4,131 screens to win an overall quiet weekend heading into the hotly contested presidential race. The final installment in the Venom trilogy has now earned $90 million
Four top films this weekend are indies – five including The Substance at no. 11, as the specialty market roars back to life. No. 3 at the domestic box office is a great story, Conclave from Focus Features, the studio behind the Downtown Abbey films. excels at drawing still elusive but key older demos to
Indie releases from limited (Memoir of a Snail) to wide (Conclave) are testing an increasingly lively specialty box office heading into awards season with a handful of decorated documentaries this week including Dahomey, Black Box Diaries, My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock and Another Kind of Wilderness and some notable expansions. Also hitting theaters this weekend,
With the last couple of October weekends stateside being off from the strike-laden marketplace a year ago, here’s hoping that superhero sequelitis and moviegoers’ erratic attitudes toward prestige fare don’t push the theatrical marketplace down further. Sony this weekend has its Marvel title Venom: The Last Dance, which is bound to see its lowest opening