Box Office Week: Bohemian Rhapsody has fabulous opening at #1 with $50M. The Nutcracker and the Four Realms has a dreadful #2 debut with $20M on a $125M budget. Nobody's Fool has a solid #3 debut with $14M.

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #	Percentage Change	Budget
1	Bohemian Rhapsody	$50,000,000	$141,703,510	1	N/A	$52M
2	The Nutcracker and the Four Realms	$20,000,000	$58,500,000	1	N/A	$125M
3	Nobody's Fool	$14,000,000	$14,265,000	1	N/A	$19M
4	A Star is Born (2018)	$11,100,000	$293,934,566	5	-20.9%	$36M
5	Halloween (2018)	$11,015,000	$229,608,705	3	-64.9%	$10M

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Notable Box Office Stories

• Bohemian Rhapsody - It was a hell of a rocky road to get the long in development biopic about the band Queen to the big screen but it finally came out this weekend to an excellent #1 debut with $50M. The film also scored a fantastic $72.2M overseas debut, mostly lead by the $26.6M two week debut in the UK. The whole story of the film feels like the triumphant ending to the kind of biopics that Bohemian Rhapsody represents. The film initially began all the way back in 2010 when Sasha Baron Cohen was announced to play Freddie Mercury, but in 2013 he left the film for creative differences. In a rare turn Cohen was very open about his troubled relationship with the remaining members of the band and there were rumors that the band wanted a more family friendly film that focused less on Freddie and the hard partying days. Several stops and starts later and finally Bryan Singer was announced as the director and Rami Malek (Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2) to star as Mercury. But the troubles had just begun...
• Bohemian Rhapsody (cont.) - Singer shot for several weeks but then reports came in that he did not return for set for a week. The crew apparently despised Singer who was constantly late and just bad at his job. Malek in particular pushed for him to be fired and while Singer claimed he was gone for health reasons the axe was brought down. The remainder of the film was shot by Dexter Fletcher who was at one point going to make the film with Ben Whishaw in the lead role. The film was finished but Singer refused split directorial credit so Fletcher was downgraded to executive producer and Singer got sole director credit. Then of course there was the backlash, fueled by concerns from Cohen's reports that the band wanted to minimize Mercury's bisexuality as well as his AIDS diagnosis and death. Early trailers seemed to indeed minimize this and while press tours and later trailers confirmed the film did not shy away from that there was still the rotten feeling in the air. Critics reviews didn't help either with many savaging the film as an outdated biopic cliche and some lambasting the way his sexuality was treated. But all of that didn't really matter.
• Bohemian Rhapsody (cont.) - As mentioned already the debut was pretty stellar, with 78% of the audience over the age of 25 who gave the film an A on Cinemascore, both great signs for long legs in the coming weeks. I bring up all that context up because it's telling to know what kind of film people want and what makes money may not always be the same. An R-rated sadder version of Freddy's story could very well have made the critics much happier but that wasn't ever really the intention of this film. This film messes with history, wildly changes timelines, and drives a single point towards the famous Queen performance at Live Aid for a reason. Queen's performance at Live Aid rules and it's really fun to watch. The intention for better or worse was not to make the most accurate Queen movie, it was to make the most profitable Queen movie. The band wanted a family friendly Queen film because the band is afraid of becoming a relic of a period long ago. Fox wants to make sure if they sink $50M into a biopic that they'll make money off of it. Smoothing out the edges may not be the most faithful or honorable but it is the best business sense. And Queen after all is a business. You don't maintain that legacy for so long without some damn good marketing. And this film is marketing, and pretty successful marketing at that.
• The Nutcracker and the Four Realms - Disney! It's been almost ten fucking years since Alice in Wonderland (2010) came out. Can we please just stop trying to make another one? Maybe this time they'll finally get the hint as The Nutcracker and the Four Quadrant Market debuted to an awful $20M at #2. This is off a ludicrous $125M budget and god knows how big a marketing push. That's an even worse debut than another candy coated far overly budgeted Disney adapation from just this year, A Wrinkle in Time which at least managed to crack $30M while still being a huge disappointment. However at least Nutcracker has the advantage over Wrinkle in international where it has already passed the lifetime overseas gross of that film with $38M, mostly lead by a $12M debut in China. This seems to be the week of dual directors as TNATFR (jesus) shares the first ever non duo directorial credit as Lasse Hallström and Joe Johnston share credit as Hallström started the film and Johnston ended it with both agreeing to share credit. The film itself did not seem as cohesive as their DGA agreement as the film was savaged by critics and was rated a not inspiring B+ on Cinemascore. Perhaps now we can stop remaking kids classics with insane costumes and massive CGI battles. Or perhaps you cowards can finally buy my $200M Jack and Jill movie. Jack and Jill go up a hill to discover the five shards of the Sacred Gem of Wishes that control all the wishes in the world, but the evil Mother Goose and her massive CGI army are coming!
• Nobody's Fool - Tonight on Unsolved Mysteries: why is Nobody's Fool, which opened to a fine #3 with $14M, the only Tyler Perry directed film without "Tyler Perry's" in the title? Could it be the Perry has finally stopped becoming the big cultural juggernaut he used to be? It seems likely as the next Madea film is reported to be the final one for the Perry created character. It is also notable that Nobody's Fool is the third worst opening for Perry in his 19 film career. Could it perhaps be that this is also the first Tyler Perry film not to be released by Lionsgate who have released every single previous film by him? Or could it be that Perry has fallen far under the Starmeter than say Tiffany Haddish who broke out huge last year in Girl's Trip and just milked that good will for all it's worth this year. Perhaps it is all of those things but all I can say is it's very weird to not know a Tyler Perry movie is out until you make the official discussion for it. Perhaps we will never know but it's a far more interesting mystery than the film itself which got bad reviews after no critics screenings were given and came out with a whimper but will probably eek out enough to justify it's small $19M budget.
• Oscar Movie Round-Up - Another week of Oscar hopefuls and this week it's all about the boys and the girls. First up is Beautiful Boy which has been verrrrrry slowly inching its way to a wide release. This week it hit 540 theaters for a $1.4M haul. Not bad and enough to keep the train rolling but may not be strong enough for a huge release. Reviews for the film's stars have just far outshined the reviews for the film itself and as an acting only Oscar play it's just not as flashy. Alright an Oscar run for the female lead horror remake Suspiria is unlikely outside of Best Witch Related Dance Number but I feel it's worth discussing on pedigree alone as this comes from Call Me By Your Name's Luca Guadagnino, The film based on the Dario Argento classic has gotten mixed reviews but had an amazing debut last weekend. However that early hype did not translate well to general audience interest $964K in 300 theaters, a per theater average of $3,102 which is a far cry from the $92,019 it had last weekend. Finally the other big boy this weekend was Boy Erased, the Joel Edgerton directed film about the true story of a gay teenager suffering through a queer conversion camp. The lead performance from Lucas Hedges has been well praised as well as Oscar potential supporting runs by Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe, but the film itself is not as well liked. Still it had a great debut opening in 4 to $220K, a per theater average of $44K. This is the rare Oscar film from the once great but currently struggling Focus Features and it will be interesting to see how it expands in the coming weeks.

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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 (Weekly)	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget	Week #
Incredibles 2	$180,084	$608,113,568	$1,238,213,568	$200M	21
Crazy Rich Asians	$764,864	$172,961,760	$234,061,760	$30M	12
Venom	$7,850,000	$198,663,348	$541,563,348	$100M	5
First Man	$2,265,000	$42,055,870	$87,055,870	$59M	4

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Notable Film Closings

Title	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget
Ant-Man and the Wasp	$216,648,740	$622,464,155	$162M
The Meg	$143,005,856	$527,805,856	$130M
Sorry to Bother You	$17,493,096	$17,493,096	$3.2M

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 (which have recently been updated).

Submitted November 05, 2018 at 09:04PM by mi-16evil https://ift.tt/2QlqTNK