Box Office Week: Venom manages to hold on to #1 with $35.7M. First Man underperforms at #3 with $16.5M. Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween scores a middling #4 with $16.2M. Bad Times at the El Royale bombs at #7 with $7.2M. Beautiful Boy earns $221K in 4 theaters, a per theater average of $55K.

RankTitleDomestic Gross (Weekend)Worldwide Gross (Cume)Week #Percentage ChangeBudget1Venom$35,700,000$378,102,1512-55.5%$100M2A Star is Born (2018)$28,000,000$135,360,3602-34.7%$36M3First Man$16,500,000$25,100,0001N/A$59M4Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween$16,225,000$19,925,000N/A$35M5Smallfoot$9,300,000$110,208,2213-35.4%$80MNotable Box Office StoriesVenom - While A Star is Born had a better hold this weekend (see comments), Venom was just too big of a juggernaut and managed to hold on to #1 with $35.7M. That represents a drop of 55.7% which for a comic book film is pretty solid. Notably that's a better drop than Spider-Man 3, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and both Amazing Spider-Mans (Spider-Men?) which all hit over 60% drops. It certainly helps that Venom came out in a far less competitive time as the only film of its kind out right now are adult dramas and kids movies. Still its hold is pretty good especially since reviews and Cinemascore made it potentially a massive drop off. The film now stands just under $150M domestic and should cross $400M worldwide in the next few days. Not bad for an $80M supervillain movie without the main character he usually fights in it.First Man - We live in an immensely stupid time that I have to preference a Neil Armstrong biopic as "the controversial new film from Damien Chazelle" which opened this week to an underwhelming #3 with $16.5M. That's not a great opening for the film which had a splashy IMAX release alongside a major opening weekend expansion that hoped to compete with A Star is Born but just got steamrollered in and Venom's wake. So what happened and how bad is it? Well let's start with the possible whys. For one there is that damn culture war with both sides decided this would be their staking ground. I won't bore you with retreading the flag controversy and google "First Man thinkpiece" for a million culture war discussions, so I'll just repeat what I said with Ghostbusters (2016): I don't there is such a thing as a true boycott these days as much as just general disinterest and annoyance. Seeing First Man means now you have to be part of "the conversation" so why not save yourself a $12 headache and watch all of Cheers on Netflix for the 3rd time.First Man (cont.) - But even with that the noise around the movie the hype has been extremely muted. For one this has just been an insanely good year for fall festival premieres with just this month seeing the release of A Star is Born, Halloween (2018), Beautiful Boy, The Hate U Give, Old Man and the Gun, and Suspiria which all just makes First Man a little less special to cinephiles who push early buzz. Then there's the fact that this is a very cold movie that focuses entirely on Armstrong and doesn't shy away from the human cost of the space program. In a time when people admire aspirational figures, a film that grounds and humanizes an aspirational figure may not be what the public wants and could explain the surprising B+ rating on Cinemascore (almost every biopic scores an A or A+). Finally there may just be the factor that most people feel they know the story. This could explain why the IMAX version was so heavily marketed including a splashy preview before Mission: Impossible - Fallout. But only 5 minutes of the film are in IMAX and the rest is blown up 16mm or 35mm. Not to mention it's not exactly a happy film, as one reviewer I read said "Who wants to see a child's funeral in IMAX." And while fall has been great lately for serious minded space movies they mostly have been fictitious.First Man (cont.) - However those films could mark the saving factor for First Man's box office run. In comparing Interstellar, Gravity, The Martian, and Arrival they all had multipliers over 3x and usually around 4x (with The Martian being the best with 4.2x) but those all had much higher openings that First Man. If it pulls off a 4x run that's around $66M domestic which is not great considering it had a budget of $59M and a decent marketing budget. Not to mention that B+ Cinemascore and the release of a much more splashy adult drama which has been driving away a lot of the potential market for this film. I'm not counting out a surprise (I can never count out a surprise after Greatest Showman) but there just seems to be too muted of a reaction to the film and too much of a headache around the conversation surrounding it. There would probably be a time where First Man would do gangbusters in the same spot but I just think 2018 is not the right year for it, and unfortunately that's something you can never predict.Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween - This October seems to be an experiment run by Sony to see how far they can get away with pushing a film on branding alone. First it was Venom without Spider-man and this week we saw the release of Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween a mostly Jack Black free sequel to the solid 2015 hit which opened to #4 with $16.2M. That's a significant downgrade from the $23.6M opening of the original but that film also cost almost twice as much to make as Goosebumps 2 carries a relatively small for its kind budget of $35M. In general the film just feels like a direct to DVD sequel that got into theaters, as the cast is entirely different and the main star of the original is downgraded to a cameo appearance. But still for that little money and not a lot of marketing $16.2M is actually kind of surprising, especially when it is just $300K away from First Man which had a much splashier debut and more marketing. Sony kind of proved their point again here, that even making it cheaper and Blackless the classic kid's series still has enough nostalgic value to make a quick buck. Of course if Sony keeps mining it the audience will catch up but maybe Goosebumps 3 will just cost $100.00 and all the creatures will be played by sock puppets...okay I'd probably pay $12 to see that in a theater.Bad Times at the El Royale - Don't call your risky original film "Bad Times at the..." because you are just giving every hacky box office writer an easy headline. More like Bad Times at the Clickbait...Store. But yeah it's not looking good for the throwback dark comedic drama which opened to a pretty bad #7 with $7.2M. The film written and directed by Drew Goddard (Cabin in the Woods, The Martian) was supposedly a requirement from Goddard in order for him to sign on to write and direct X-Force for Fox. Even still the film had a rather low budget of $35M and many of the splashy stars took pay cuts in order to appear in the film. Unfortunately it's just not a great time for original genre films, with many of them becoming notable flops while the others become extended TV series/miniseries on streaming services like Netflix. It also doesn't help the film just did not get the kind of intense buzz it would have needed, with critics finding faults in the inconsistent tone and extended running time. Add on to that a mystery plot that makes it hard to market and it's not surprising the film just didn't manage to find an audience. The irony is that the truth that no one goes to see these kinds of movie in theaters will be proven when it likely become a big cult hit when it shows up on Netflix.Oscar Movie Round-Up - Oh boy is it finally time to open up this section again? I think so! While this year the big contender for Best Picture is surprisingly a wide release studio film, the smaller films are starting to emerge in force. One of the earlier ones is Beautiful Boy, which opened in 4 theaters this weekend to $221,437, a per theater average of $55,359. That's the best per theater average for any Amazon film and a good sign there could be juice in the campaign. The film tells the true life story of writer Nic Sheff's heroin addiction at a young age. Interestingly the film is based on two memoirs, one by Nic and one by his father David, and the film attempts to meld both perspectives. Reviews have not been through the roof but the one bright spot and main Oscar hopeful is Timothée Chalamet, who plays Nic. Chalamet had an incredible year last year with Lady Bird and more notably Call Me By Your Name where he was the critic's darling choice for Best Actor over winner Gary Oldman. It's unclear if Chalamet will run in lead or supporting but both categories are getting locked up by A Star is Born with Sam Elliot expected to win a career centric win for supporting and some predicting Cooper will win Best Actor as an overall prize for all his work on the film. Still this debut is promising for the film's run and will be propped up by the emerging ascendancy of Chalamet as well as opioid addiction being such a major social issue of the moment.​Films Reddit Wants to FollowThis is a segment where we keep a weekly tally of currently showing films that aren't in the Top 5 that fellow redditors want updates on. If you'd like me to add a film to this chart, make a comment in this thread.TitleDomestic Gross (Weekly)Domestic Gross (Cume)Worldwide Gross (Cume)BudgetWeek #Deadpool 2$1,660$318,490,675$734,245,170$110M22Incredibles 2$417,506$607,498,593$1,227,498,593$200M18Ant-Man and the Wasp$193,114$216,519,940$622,132,462$162M15Teen Titans Go! To The Movies$28,671$29,562,341$51,462,341$10M12Mission: Impossible - Fallout$497,901$220,150,420$790,623,921$178M12Crazy Rich Asians$3,214,426$171,367,368$228,367,368$30M9Notable Film ClosingsTitleDomestic Gross (Cume)Worldwide Gross (Cume)BudgetJurassic World: Fallen Kingdom$416,769,345$1,304,808,072$170MAs always r/boxoffice is a great place to share links and other conversations about box office news.Also you can see the archive of all Box Office Week posts at r/moviesboxoffice (which have recently been updated). via /r/movies https://ift.tt/2NILJ7A