Tyler Perry's 'Madea Halloween' Tyler Perry's 'Madea Halloween' Tyler Perry's 'Madea Halloween'
October 23 2016 - 10:00PM
Dow Jones News
Sick with sequel fatigue? This weekend at the box office
provided no relief, with three sequels topping the charts but
delivering mixed performances.
"Tyler Perry's Boo! A Madea Halloween," the director's latest
turn in his Madea wig, fared best, with an estimated $27.6 million
debut at No. 1 in the U.S. and Canada.
Though its opening was just the third highest of the six movies
in the series, it was a definite improvement from the previous
installment, "Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas," which opened to $16
million in December 2013.
"Jack Reacher: Never Go Back," starring Tom Cruise as the Lee
Child-created investigator who always finds himself in the middle
of a massive conspiracy, took second place, grossing a solid—if not
mind-blowing—$23 million. "Never Go Back" also outperformed the
series' previous installment, an anomaly in today's Hollywood;
several sequels have fallen short this year. The original "Jack
Reacher" attracted $15 million in its 2012 opening, and went on to
collect $80 million.
"Ouija: Origin of Evil" conjured up $14 million in third place,
a fine result for a microbudget movie, but still about 30% below
the opening of the original "Origin of Evil," about seance scam
artists who discover a haunted Ouija board, enjoyed solid critical
reviews and faces little competition from other scary movies
heading into next week's Halloween weekend. Audiences were more
skeptical than critics, giving the movie a "C" grade, according to
market- research firm CinemaScore.
The weekend's top two performers were much-needed successes for
their studios. Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., which released
"Boo!", has weathered disappointing releases in recent months, such
as "Deepwater Horizon" and "Blair Witch."
"Boo!" expanded Mr. Perry's core audience, said David Spitz,
Lions Gate's co-president of domestic distribution. The director's
previous movies attracted audiences that were about 80% to 90%
African-American, whereas the opening-weekend crowd for "Boo!" was
about 60% black, he said. The broader audience stemmed in part from
the casting of social-media "influencers," such as YouTube star
Kian Lawley and dancer Lexy Panterra. "Boo!" had a production
budget of about $20 million.
Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures needed a win after a bruising
year of hardly any hits. The studio's "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back"
will lean on Mr. Cruise's overseas star appeal to boost returns. In
addition to its North American gross, the movie collected an
additional $31 million abroad since opening in 84% of the total
box-office marketplace this weekend. The original "Jack Reacher"
eventually grossed $138 million from international box offices.
"Never Go Back" had a production budget of $60 million, a
relatively modest sum for an action movie, which should help it
turn a profit for Paramount. "It's a challenged environment for
sequels," said Megan Colligan, Paramount's president of world-wide
distribution and marketing. "It's important that you're managing
the price of it."
The weekend's other new wide release couldn't count on stars Jon
Hamm or Zach Galifianakis to fill seats. Twentieth Century Fox's
"Keeping Up with the Joneses," about a suburban couple whose lives
become entangled in international espionage, barely registered with
moviegoers, taking in just $5.6 million. (Fox's parent company,
21st Century Fox, and News Corp, parent company of The Wall Street
Journal, share common ownership.)
In other box-office news, the critically acclaimed "Moonlight"
collected a robust $415,000 from just four theaters. That bodes
well for the drama about a young closeted black man coming of age
in Miami, which will expand in the coming weeks before going
nationwide on Nov. 4.
Of all the new releases, audiences liked "Boo!" the best. It
received an "A" grade, according to CinemaScore, while "Jack
Reacher" got a "B+" and "Joneses" a "B-."
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 23, 2016 21:45 ET (01:45 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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