Weekend Box Office: The Nun II defeats the Expend4bles

In its second straight week with a photo finish victory, The Nun II seems to have taken down the Expend4bles with an estimated $8.4 million, representing a 42% decline from last week. Despite this being the lowest grossing weekend of the year, this is great news for the Conjuring spin-off film as remaining atop the charts for three weeks in a row is a rare feat in a front loaded marketplace. With another month and change to go before Halloween, more people will be in the mood for a spooky time in theaters which should help this one remain steady at the box office. Of course in the coming weeks it will have some competition such as Saw X, The Exorcist: Believer and Five Nights at Freddie’s.

Expend4bles absolutely cratered at the box office with just a $8.3 million opening. This is a cataclysmic ending to a franchise that never really seemed to be the huge box office draw people were expecting (at least domestically). The original film topped out with $103 million which isn’t horrible, but certainly not the type of behemoth one may have expected given its impressive roster of talent. Expendables 2 cost even more to make and actually did worse at the box office with just $85 million domestic, so the powers that be decided to go the PG13 route as a way to entice younger fans to theaters. They were not enticed and the third film in the franchise only managed a $39.3 million domestic total. The one saving grace these films had is their international grosses which always saved the films from financial ruin.

The opening for Expend4bles is the very definition of franchise fatigue. Perhaps it was the fact that the original concept was to get together all those old bad ass stars of the 80’s and 90’s for a nostalgia trip of blow em up mayhem and this latest chapter seemed to abandon that concept. Perhaps it was the reviews, with this film boasting just a 16% rotten tomatoes score as opposed to the first ones 41%, the second ones 67% and the third ones 31%. Even our own Chris Bumbray couldn’t hide his disappointment in this film with his 5/10 review. 

On Thursday, we discussed how this film was tracking for a franchise worst opening in the $15 million range, but thought that people may turn up for some old school shut your brain off at the door entertainment. Boy were we wrong! It is a shame for a franchise to go out like this, especially for lead star Jason Stratham, who I am a big fan of, but found his last two films: this and Meg 2: The Trench to be very underwhelming. Thank god he has the highly entertaining Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre on his resume so that his 2023 output wasn’t a complete waste (for me at least). 

Spots three and four go to A Haunting in Venice with $6.3 million added to its not that impressive $25.3 million domestic total while The Equalizer 3 continues its slow burn to the $100 million mark with an additional $4.7 million added to its running domestic total of $81.2 million. 

Coming in fifth place is Barbie who added IMAX screens to her repertoire this weekend and in doing so saw an additional $3.2 million added to her stellar domestic total of $630.4 million. That number still sees her just on the outside of the top ten domestic earners of all time, she will need to add another $23.3 million to pass the $653.6 million taken in by Jurassic World. At this point that doesn’t seem likely, but you never know what will happen. With the ongoing SAG-Aftra strike forcing movies to delay their releases, it is possible that Barbie continues to stick around long enough to sneak into the top ten. 

Dropping to sixth place is My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 with a weekend take of $3 million and a domestic total of $23.8 million, a little over $20 million less than where its predecessor was at, at similar times in their respective releases. Seventh place goes to the new horror film It Lives Inside which saw a first weekend of $2.6 million. The South By Southwest pick-up has seen decent reviews, including an 8/10 from our own Tyler Nichols, however audiences seem to not be as impressed as it currently has a 46% audience score.

Eighth place goes to Dumb Money as it continues its slow rollout this week. In just 616 theaters it managed a $2.5 million weekend take, a nearly 1000% increase over its limited opening last week. The film goes fully wide next week and I recommend people going to check it out. It is just a very fascinating break down of something many of us had heard about, the Game Stop stock market, and delves deep into how exactly it all unfolded and how a group of everyday people were able to beat a bunch of hedge fund people at their own game. It also makes you feel slightly depressed when you leave the theater and realize that had you just invested some money in the stocks a few years ago, you could have made a mint! But I can not recommend this film highly enough. The story, the acting, the comedy, it is a film that fires on all cylinders. You can check out Chris Bumbray’s 7/10 review here. 

Rounding out the top ten are Blue Beetle with an additional $1.8 million added to its $69.8 million domestic total, roughly $34 million less than its $104 million budget while Oppenheimer hangs on for another week with an additional $1.6 million added to its impressive $321.2 million domestic total, where it has become the highest grossing biopic of all time.

What do you make of Expend4bles cataclysmic opening? Let us know in the comments and don’t forget to check out our weekly poll where we ask: What is your favorite Sylvester Stallone Film?