The fan-favorite Terrifier 3 came to theaters this weekend, and Art the Clown came out on top against bigger movies: namely, the already shaky Joker: Folie á Deux.
Per Variety, Damien Leone’s slasher threequel earned $18.3 million in North America in its opening weekend. That’s a pretty big deal for the series: not only was this one reportedly only $2 million to make, it actually exceeded most projections that pegged a start of $10-11 million. For further comparison, this also blows past the worldwide $15.7 million haul for Terrifier 2 in 2016. Solid reviews and word of mouth from its passionate fans will take Terrifier 3 even further, but can Art hold his own against Smile 2 next weekend and Venom 3 the weekend after? We’ll find out.
As for Joker, the hits are hitting Arthur Fleck even harder: domestically, the film fell to third place with $7.055 million, down 82% from its $37.8 million open. It’s one of the biggest second-weekend drops for a superhero movie, and a much steeper dip than the ones for last year’s The Marvels (78.1%) and The Flash (72.5%). Globally, it’s now made $165.3 million, and sources told Variety it might be a struggle for the movie to hit a break-even point thanks to its critical lashings and bad word of mouth.
Meanwhile, The Wild Robot happily did its own thing in domestic second place. Now on week three of its theatrical run, the animated flick added another $13.45 million to its take, making for $148.5 million worldwide. Dreamworks is surely happy with how it’s still doing, and as we learned on Saturday, a sequel is already in the works. As for fellow September holdovers Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Transformers One, they’re still hanging in theaters: for its sixth weekend, Beetlejuice earned another $7.05 million, bringing its worldwide total for $420 million. And Transformers made $3.65 million in weekend number three, bringing its domestic total to $52.8 million and $111 million globally so far.
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