The summer box office may have ended with a whimper over the last couple of weeks but the fall box office has started off with a major hit thanks to everyone's favorite clown, Pennywise. “It”, the movie based on author Stephen King's hit 1986 novel, has been impressing critics and is also giving movie goers a reason to go out to the theaters in droves.
'It' dominates the box office
'It' dominated the weekend box office during the first week of the fall season, defined as the day after the Labor Day Weekend through the Thursday before the first Friday in November.
The Warner Bros./New Line Cinema film performed even better than it was projected to. At the start of last week, it was projected to make $60-65 million, with those projections bumped up to $80-90 million after positive reviews.
Studio estimates had the movie making $117.1 million after the weekend but the final numbers had the film making a staggering $123.4 million from 4,103 screens. Considering that the movie only had an estimated production budget of $35 million, this makes it even more of a massive success.
This means that “It” has had the third-highest Opening Weekend this year, only behind “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” ($146.5 million) and “Beauty and the Beast” ($174.7 million). “It” also obliterated the previous record for the biggest horror movie opening, which was set back in 2001 by “Hannibal” with $58 million.
On Friday alone, “It” had the biggest preview numbers ever for an R-rated film and it beat the September opening weekend record set by “Hotel Transylvania 2” ($48.5 million) in 2015. The film also had the second largest opening weekend ever for an R-rated film, only behind “Deadpool” ($132.4 million), even with attendance estimated to drop by 5% due to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.
The movie is a hit with critics and fans
With 217 critic review on RottenTomatoes, “It” has a certified fresh rating of 87% and an audience score of 89% from 36,396 user ratings. On CinemaScore audience gave the film a B+ rating and the movie was also propelled through the talk on social media, which led to such increased projections for the film in the first place.
How the rest of the box office did
In second place this week was another new film, “Home Again.” The romantic comedy starring Resse Witherspoon took in $8.5 million. The only other notable new film of the weekend was “9/11”, a drama/action movie starring Charlie Sheen which came in 28th place, making $170,000. “The Hitman's Bodyguard” was finally knocked off of the top spot after three weeks in a row, coming in third place with $4.8 million.
