The numbers are in for this weekend's box office and there's nothing particularly surprising that's come up since we reported the Friday numbers yesterday. As expected, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, the latest eccentric fantasy-comedy from Tim Burton, has taken the weekend with a commanding $28.5 million; here's Matt's review for the film. the movie, which stars Asa Butterfield, Eva Green, and Samuel L. Jackson, cost some $110 million to make. That number puts it clearly above Peter Berg's Deepwater Horizon, which was made for about the same amount of money and came in with $20.8 million; here's Matt's review of Berg's real-life drama. Though that might seem like under-performing, both films did much better than what pre-tracking suggested.
Mind you, Burton's last blockbuster, Dark Shadows, made $29 million in its opening weekend, off of a $150 million budget, only to quickly fade out of memory for moviegoers. That might very well be Miss Peregrine's fate as well, especially with The Girl on the Train and The Birth of a Nation hitting screens next weekend. Regardless, both Deepwater Horizon and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children did a whole heck of a lot better than the other major release of the weekend, Jared Hess' Masterminds, which came in with a total of $6.6 million. It's failure, unfortunately, only goes to underline the decisions that led to Relativity having to file for bankruptcy recently.
The Magnificent Seven came in third place with $15.5 million, which would be a 55% drop from its opening weekend take, while Storks came in at number four with $13.4 million. Masterminds came in at sixth place while Clint Eastwood's exquisite Sully took the fifth spot with $8.4 million in its fourth week at the multiplex. On one hand, Eastwood's triumph at the box office, following the tremendous box office performance of American Sniper, suggests that auteur filmmaking is not out of the realm of interest for even the most populist audiences. On the other hand, the focus on famous heroes that are still fresh in people's memories probably plays a hand, as does both characters' work in the armed forces. As such, just how well Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children does in its second week should prove to be a better indicator of just how much audiences care about established artists in this day and age. We shall see how this shakes out next week.
