Tom Hanks’ flight drama Sully is the No. 1 movie in North America for a second, consecutive weekend after earning an additional $22 million in receipts, BoxOfficeMojo.com announced Sunday.
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Sully not only held up well in its second week with a small drop in revenue (an estimated $22 million), but held onto first place easily…the second-place finisher, Blair Witch, did not even break $10 million, with an estimated $9.7 million. Blair Witch, a direct sequel to the iconic 1999 found footage film, The Blair Witch Project, is a film that was expected to be carried on franchise name value alone, considering the movie has a relatively unknown cast. Documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger tried his hand at the franchise with 2000’s “Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2”, which also was a box office failure.
The horror sequel “Blair Witch” opened with a moderate $765,000 at more than 2,300 US locations on Thursday night. Forecasts predict it’ll open in the mid- to late-teens, though that aforementioned hunger for horror might help bring that number higher.
Although the film came in at No. 2, Blair Witch disappointed in a big way.
So yeah, it’s not exactly looking great for a potential adaptation of Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, although I’m not sure how many fans really want to see that novel adapted anyway, considering the controversy surrounding one of its major off-screen plot points. Both Diary and Edge of Reason opened wide to about $10 million, though Baby should surpass that thanks to the nostalgia angle – as well as the recent lack of lighthearted, live-action comedies in theaters – and end up somewhere in the mid-teens.
“Snowden”, directed by Oliver Stone and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as N.S.A. whistleblower Edward Snowden, carries a $40 million price tag. Gordon-Levitt’s last biographical drama, 2015’s The Walk, opened wide at a similar time previous year to $3.7 million, a number Snowden might double thanks to its considerably buzzier subject matter – no offense to high-wire walkers.
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The disappointing debut of “Blair Witch” is likely the result of the current oversaturation in the horror genre, according to Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at comScore.
