Weekend Box Office Report: Yep, it’s still Tenet

Another time on top for Tenet!

Once more, the time-twisting thriller TENET remained in first place at the withering domestic box office with an estimated $2.7 million for the weekend.

After five weekends on North American screens, filmmaker Christopher Nolan's $200 million sci-fi espionage movie is now up to a domestic total of $45.1 million. The PG-13 Warner Bros. release has made it to a worldwide total of $307 million.

At this point, it will be interesting to see what movie overtakes TENET at the top of the domestic box office. The 007 movie NO TIME TO DIE has already (and unsurprisingly, given the recent spikes in COVID-19 cases) relocated from its November 20 date out to April 2, 2021, and Disney/Pixar's animated SOUL is almost guaranteed to bounce from its planned November 20 release date as well.

Upcoming movies that are still on the calendar are the Robert De Niro comedy THE WAR WITH GRANDPA (October 9), the Liam Neeson crime thriller HONEST THIEF (October 16), and the supernatural horror movie THE EMPTY MAN (October 23). Or will it be a random older title that supplants Nolan's big-budget box office champ, as studios continue to dig through their archives looking for suitable existing material to throw in front of willing moviegoers?

One thing seems certain: there will be fewer screens to show these movies on. In the wake of NO TIME TO DIE moving to next year, theater chain Cineworld (which owns the Regal cinemas in North America) will reportedly be shutting down much of their business. Regal currently accounts for 7,155 domestic screens, the second-biggest chain behind AMC. Whether the closure will be temporary or permanent remains to be seen.

Speaking of catalog titles being regurgitated onto screens, Disney re-released their 1993 horror-comedy HOCUS POCUS in 2,570 locations over the weekend and scared up $1.9 million.

The PG-rated family feature about a trio of witches (Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy) menacing kids in Salem, Massachusetts now has a domestic total of $41.2 million (unadjusted from its initial theatrical run).

The horror-themed mutant movie THE NEW MUTANTS got booted to third place with $1 million over its sixth weekend, bringing the final Fox X-MEN spinoff to a domestic total of $20.9 million and $41.9 million worldwide (on a reported cost of $67 million).

Russell Crowe's road-rage thriller UNHINGED was spinning its wheels in fourth place with $870,000 for a total of $18.4 million on its eighth domestic weekend. It was followed by the Jim Caviezel kidnapping thriller INFIDEL, and the reissue of 1980 sequel STAR WARS: EPISODE V — THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK,

Warner Bros. apparently spoke his name three times, and BEETLEJUICE manifested on 346 screens to take seventh place with $300,000. Director Tim Burton's PG-rated 1988 movie, with Michael Keaton's titular bio-exorcist "assisting" Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin, now has a box office total of $74 million (not adjusted for inflation).

The Dacre Montgomery/Geraldine Viswanathan romantic comedy THE BROKEN HEARTS GALLERY was in eighth place with $275,000 over its fourth weekend.

The R-rated horror-thriller POSSESSOR (currently going by the title POSSESSOR UNCUT) was released on 320 screens for a weekend opening of $227,000.

Written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg (son of "body horror" maestro David Cronenberg), the movie follows a corporate assassin (Andrea Riseborough) who inhabits the bodies of other people to execute her targets. Christopher Abbott, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Sean Bean also appear in the unsettling feature (check out the JoBlo review HERE).

Finishing out the Top 10 was the R-rated monster movie SHORTCUT with $210,000 for its second weekend, giving it a ten-day domestic total of $652,000.

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