Kingsman: The Golden Circle will not quite reach the $40 million-plus high estimates that many box office prognosticators had hoped for but it will nevertheless hold the top spot for the weekend with an estimable $39 million. That's about $3 million up from the first Kingsman movie's opening weekend but this bump barely signals a growing fanbase. The Golden Circle cost a little over $100 million to make as compared to the $81 million that it cost to make Kingsman: The Secret Service, and the announced third film will likely cost even more. My skepticism over how much of this audience will show up for a third helping of Eggy and his compatriots is growing.

For the time being though, The Golden Circle is on top, unseating the mighty It, which brought in another $30 million to land in the second spot. The more interesting development is that of the LEGO Ninjago Movie, which landed in third place with $21.2 million. The third and least successful LEGO movie suffers from not being under the rubric of a DC property like the LEGO Batman Movie, which brought in $53 million in its opening weekend earlier this year. Even so, that an animated film from a well-known brand/franchise didn't perform better against two films meant for the teenager market is strange and highlights a problematic trend for this franchise. The LEGO Movie opened with $69 million as compared to $53 million for Batman and $21.2 million for Ninjago, and the next installment -- The LEGO Movie 2 -- won't be out until first quarter 2019. Will audiences still show up in droves for these movies at that point?

One would have to hope that the middling performance of American Assassin, notable only for its solid cast, would squash any possibility of a franchise being spawned. The action flick brought in $6.2 million this weekend to land in the fourth spot, bringing its cumulative gross to $26.1 million. Added to its paltry foreign take (about $6 million), the movie hasn't even made back its production budget yet, nevermind its marketing costs. Indeed, it might have beaten out Home Again, which landed in fifth place with $3.3 million, on the charts but the Reese Witherspoon romantic comedy only cost $12 million to make and has likely already turned a minor profit with a few more weeks on the charts to go. When American Made and the Flatliners remake enter the fray next weekend, its likely that both of these movies will get pushed out of the top five, but only one of them will still be in the red.

Here's your top five for the weekend: