Weekend Box Office Report: October 31-November 2, 2014

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Nightcrawler crawls to #1!

Moviegoers were drawn to different kinds of creeps this Halloween weekend, putting the Jake Gyllenhaal crime drama NIGHTCRAWLER at the top of the box office with an estimated $10.9 million!

The directing debut of screenwriter Dan Gilroy (THE BOURNE LEGACY) had already collected acclaim from festivals, and audiences were also keen on getting a glimpse at the seedy Los Angeles underbelly (or maybe they thought it was an X-Men spinoff).

NIGHTCRAWLER's opening was a bit less than the last time Gyllenhaal took to the mean streets of L.A. in END OF WATCH ($13.1 million), but critics raved about his latest with 94% on Rotten Tomatoes.

It was enough to keep NIGHTCRAWLER just a few thousand bucks ahead of the supernatural spooker OUIJA in second with $10.9 million (although their positions could flip when tomorrow's actual receipts are calculated). As the only real horror option for Halloween weekend, the PG-13 thriller ignored critics and crowds who previously pointed the planchette at "NO", dropping only 45% from its opening last weekend.

Although business was fairly slow across the board, Brad Pitt's trusty tank FURY, David Fincher's GONE GIRL and Guillermo del Toro's Day of the Dead celebration THE BOOK OF LIFE all held onto their same slots from last weekend (with GONE GIRL now hanging in the Top 5 for its fifth week). The R-rated Keanu Reeves hitman action flick JOHN WICK got gunned down to sixth place with $8 million, 44% less than its second-place opening last week.

The Bill Murray comedy ST. VINCENT jumped up a spot to seventh with $7.7 million as it seems to be gathering positive word-of-mouth, and Disney's ALEXANDER AND THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY slipped down a notch to eighth. At the bottom of the chart, THE JUDGE and DRACULA UNTOLD swapped places from last weekend.

Other movies featuring chills and thrills couldn't benefit from the Halloween weekend — Nicole Kidman's BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP went to bed on 1900 screens and slumbered with just $2 million, while the original SAW got a 10th anniversary re-release on more than 2000 screens but only captured $650k. And the new Daniel Radcliffe horror flick HORNS (also on VOD) came out on 103 screens for a sad $1k per-screen average.

Outside the chart, the Nicholas Sparks adaptation THE BEST OF ME departed the list after two weeks, while the Michael Keaton exhibition BIRDMAN continues to draw crowds in limited release (its per-screen average was more than double anything in the Top 10). Also notable: now with $765 million worldwide, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY is the third-biggest movie in Marvel's cinematic universe behind only THE AVENGERS and IRON MAN 3.

Next weekend brings Christopher Nolan's anticipated sci-fi journey INTERSTELLAR and the Marvel (but not Marvel cinematic universe) computer-animated family feature BIG HERO 6, plus limited releases of the horror movie JESSABELLE and the Stephen Hawking biopic THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING.

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