Spectre opened at No. 1 with $73 million, the second-biggest opening in history for a James Bond movie, falling short of Skyfall, which opened to $88 million in 2012.
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The 24th Bond adventure and the fourth to star Daniel Craig outsold the other big debut this weekend, “The Peanuts Movie”, which tallied $45 million, according to studio estimates.
“Spectre” also set records at IMAX Theatres, where the film took in $15.4 million worldwide, beating IMAX’s Skyfall wide-release take of $15.22 million. It is hard to compare how well SPECTRE is doing, in comparison to Skyfall, as they opened at different times of the year. The competition was different, the weekend was different.
Spectre still had the second-biggest opening weekend for a Bond film in the U.S. and Canada.
The film was hugely expensive, carrying a US$250 million price tag.
Seventh and eighth place go to Burnt (estimated $3 million) and The Last Witch Hunter (estimated $2.7 million), and neither film is looking good.
On the surface, it seems like there should be nothing to complain about regarding this week’s box office. According to Box Office Mojo, total domestic box office sales for October 2015 were down 49 per cent compared to October 2014 and the Halloween weekend was the worst since 2000. That $118 million total for the top two movies is very strong, showing that there’s plenty of room in the marketplace for both an action film that plays to all ages and a family film based on a beloved franchise at the same time.
The latest Bond film, Spectre, has been put under a lot of pressure to do better than previous Bond film Skyfall in terms of the box office.
In limited release, Spotlight starring Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams enjoyed a solid start banking $302,000 from five theaters in NY, Los Angeles and Boston.
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“The performance of “Spectre” is truly astonishing when you consider that the first James Bond film hit theaters over 50 years ago”, said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Rentrak. The drama, starring Tom Hanks and written by the Coen Brothers, continues to hold strong adding just over $6 million to bring its total to just under $55 million, but will likely fall out of the top five by next weekend.
