Box Office Week: Kingsman: The Golden Circle comes in #1 with a solid $39M while The LEGO Ninjago Movie flops at #3 with $21.5M, $30M less than LEGO Batman's opening. Meanwhile IT has grossed $266.3M domestic, beating The Exorcist ($232.9M) as the highest grossing R-rated horror film ever.

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #
1	Kingsman: The Golden Circle	$39,000,000	$100,246,734	1
2	IT	$30,000,000	$478,038,881	3
3	The LEGO Ninjago Movie	$21,245,000	$31,745,000	1
4	American Assassin	$6,250,000	$32,287,435	2
5	Home Again	$3,311,821	$25,087,652	3

Notable Box Office Stories:

• There's always something interesting about a follow-up to a surprising hit and Kingsman: The Golden Circle is in the rare category of just kind of more of the same as the film opened at #1 to $39M. In comparison Kingsman: The Secret Service opened at #2 in February of 2015 to $36.2M (weirdly as counter-programming to 50 Shades of Grey instead of vice-versa) so we aren't exactly looking at the huge increase we often see with a sequel to a well reviewed film. It's also not great that Kingsman: TGC had a lot more runway than the previous film with two weeks out from IT and opening against an underperforming kids film. Now all of this to say that there's nothing terribly wrong here. The budget is still about the same, $100M v the $94M of the original. The real question will be the hold as the original had a fantastic multiplier of 3.5x and in that it's hard to necessarily see Kingsman: TGC repeating that figure. That sort of multiplier indicates a film that audiences were initially suspicious of but good word of mouth brought them in on second, third, fourth, etc. weekends. I feel like now audiences know what it is and either didn't care enough for the sequel or are just burnt out. Still it did receive the same Cinemascore as the original (B+) so if it does multiply to 3.5x or more I will gladly eat my words. The other big factor is overseas where the film is seeing more of that traditional sequel bump. The film grossed $61.2M this weekend overseas, pushing the worldwide gross over $100M in its opening weekend. It saw almost double the premiere of Kingsman: TSS in the UK ($11.1M versus $6.4M) and had great openings in Russia and Taiwan. The real big markets though are yet to come, namely South Korea and China which went big for Kingsman: TSS (China: $74.6M, South Korea: $46.8M). Overall Kingsman: TGC is performing a lot like the golden era of Bond movies it emulates (see Roger Moore era in particular) just trucking along making good solid profits enough to justify the next incarnation hoping that will be the massive hit.

• Boy the life of the LEGO animated franchise has been fascinating as the third of the franchise opened to an extreme franchise low as The LEGO Ninjago Movie opened at #3 with $21.2M. That marks it opening more than $30M less than The LEGO Batman Movie and more than $45M less than The LEGO Movie. While most expected Ninjago to open less than those films it's still a markedly low opening for a franchise that's just not been fulfilling on the promise of the first film. Speaking of surprise hits The LEGO Movie was a big one, coming in with no expectations to open with $69M and had a fantastic multiplier closing it's run at $257.7M. So expectations were very high for LEGO Batman which while a spin-off features one of the most profitable movie heroes ever yet it opened lower than LEGO Movie and had no staying power, closing just under $300M worldwide. In comparison a similarly budgeted movie without the massive branding of LEGO or Batman, The Secret Life of Pets, managed to make 2x as much as LEGO Batman domestically and 2.8x as much worldwide. And now we get to Ninjago which also had franchise lows in every foreign market it opened in. Certainly after LEGO Batman the writing was on the wall because if that film couldn't expand it's brand then what would happen to a film based on a popular if not universally beloved LEGO TV show that's not even a direct continuation of said show? Almost certainly WB will be waiting now with baited breath for what will happen financially with The LEGO Movie Sequel because it's not looking good for the LEGO brand, despite good reviews, because the audiences just aren't connecting like WB thought they would.

• It seems the suspiciously named Entertainment Studios (come on that has Yakuza front written all over it) couldn't quite recapture the surprising success of 47 Meters Down as their latest direct-to-DVD-quality-but-direct-to-theaters film Friend Request opened pitifully at #7 with $2.4M. The film was already release by Warner Bros overseas last year and is already on Region 2 blu-ray, so this screams another direct to DVD film that just was released in hopes of making a big hit. With a $6M budget this isn't really a film as much as a minor investment that's not paying off. Hopefully ES can recoup with 48 Meters Down...not even kidding, that's literally the title.

• So before I give the record IT broke this weekend I will note your opinion on this record will vary greatly on A) what you define as a horror movie and B) how much you care about inflation. Let's state the record first and then we'll get all nerdy with it. This weekend IT passed the lifetime domestic gross of The Exorcist ($232.9M) earning $266.3M making it the highest grossing R-rated horror film ever. Okay so first up the horror definition. I've seen a lot of articles this week that IT is now the highest grossing horror film period. However while certainly no one doubts The Exorcist as a horror film there is one film that is defined as horror on Box Office Mojo that stands above IT still, The Sixth Sense with a lifetime gross of $293.5M. Now some define this film as a thriller but to me it's a horror film and especially one if Box Office Mojo defines it as such, however if you disagree then IT already is the highest grossing horror film overall. Not that it matters much since almost certainly IT will become the first horror film of any qualification to gross over $300M domestic and shatter Sixth Sense's record so just wait a week or two if you agree with me. And since Exorcist is rated R and Sixth Sense is PG-13 then there is still a major record here. Okay now on to the inflation stuff which is my personal little pet peeve. Now obviously you are probably thinking, wow $232.9M is a lot of 1970s money, and you're mostly right. It's crazy impressive that The Exorcist held it's record for 40 years and it still stands on the adjusted for inflation chart as the 9th highest grossing film of all time with $983M. Now to start picking nits that number is not totally accurate because actually Exorcist made $193M in its original run but the adjusted and the overall gross account for various re-releases over the years. Part of my problem with adjusted for inflation numbers is most of those films came out long before home video so re-releases were a big damn deal cause it was the only way to see a film for many was a re-release (this is more of a note about Gone with the Wind than The Exorcist who's big re-release was in 2000). The other issue is that we use incredibly broad math to define these things, as not only is inflation calculation incredibly broad but a lot of this is based on rough out-molded data long before the days of daily tracking. But even if you trust the math completely I don't think it should define your opinion. Look I totally get why seeing adjusted one film making $266M versus another making $983M makes the former look like chump change. Ultimately my main thing is don't let inflation calculation take away from either film, both runs are incredibly impressive and important to the industry. The thing is box office defines the kinds of films that will be made and while The Exorcist's run is incredible, it doesn't define right now outside of bad marketing tropes. IT is going to define the next 5-10 years of horror films, much like Exorcist did for ita day. If you want to bring up inflation in the comments be my guest but just remember all of this stuff is about context. Don't let shakey at best math only define what a hit is to you or not because then only the highest of the high notes will even come close to being enough.

Films Reddit Wants to Follow

This 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.

Title	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget	Week #
Wonder Woman	$411,652,211	$819,552,211	$149M	17
Cars 3	$152,416,757	$361,516,757	$175M	15
Baby Driver	$107,431,560	$224,531,560	$34M	13
Spider-man: Homecoming	$331,893,662	$874,393,662	$175M	12
Dunkirk	$186,309,307	$512,709,307	$100M	10
Wolf Warrior 2	$2,715,661	$870,320,000	$30M	8

Notable Film Closings

Title	Domestic Gross	Worldwide Gross	Budget
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2	$389,813,101	$863,413,966	$200M
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales	$172,558,876	$794,068,817	$230M
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets	$40,479,370	$221,514,101	$177M

As 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.

Submitted September 25, 2017 at 10:08PM by mi-16evil http://ift.tt/2xAuyk4