Tim Burton and Warner Bros.’ Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is losing none of its ghostly mojo in its second weekend and will easily stay atop the box office chart with $52 million or more as it hurtles toward the $200 million mark domestically.
The pic, playing in 4,575 theaters domestically, could fall as little as 51 percent.
Blumhouse and Universal’s new horror-thriller Speak No Evil is also good news for the box office. The pic, coming No. 2, is on course to open to a better-than-expected $12.3 million from 3,375 locations against a budget of just $15 million before marketing. The movie follows an American family as they spend the weekend at a plush British estate only to discover that their host, played by James McAvoy, has a rather sinister side. McAvoy is earning strong marks for his performance.
Speak No Evil boasts an 85 percent critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and a B+ CinemaScore from audiences.
Deadpool & Wolverine is holding at No. 3 all the way in its eighth weekend with an estimated $5.4 million, followed by the new documentary Am I Racist?
Featuring conservative provocateur Matt Walsh, Am I Racist? is on course to open an impressive $4.5 million to $5 million from 1,517 locations, the top debut of 2024 so far for a doc — and one of the top nationwide launches of the past decade.
The Justin Folk-directed film, described as a “social experiment,” comes from the Daily Wire and Digital Astronaut and marks the company’s first theatrical launch for an in-house production with distribution handled by SDG Releasing. In the film, Walsh assumes the role of a DEI trainee who attends anti-racism workshops, crashes private intellectual dinner parties and conducts sit-down interviews with experts and everyday Americans alike on the topic of racism. (One such expert is author Robin DiAngelo, who penned White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.)
Am I Racist? is doing big business in conservative markets in the South, Midwest and Mountain States.
Ronald Reagan biopic Reagan, starring Dennis Quaid, is pacing to come in No. 5 in its third weekend with an estimated $3 million or more from 2,450 cinemas for a projected domestic total of $23 million through Sunday.
The big casualty of the weekend is Lionsgate’s new action pic The Killer’s Game, starring Dave Bautista as a veteran hitman who orders a contract for his own murder after being mistakenly diagnosed with a terminal condition. The R-rated movie may only open in the $2.6 million to $3 million range after earning poor reviews and a B+ CinemaScore from audiences.
At the specialty box office, the critically acclaimed Sundance Film Festival favorite My Old Ass is opening to promising numbers in seven theaters in New York, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas. From Amazon and MGM, the coming-of-age story revolves around an 18-year-old who meets her older self. Aubrey Plaza and newcomer Maisy Stella star in writer-director Megan Park’s second feature.
Weekend numbers will be updated Sunday.
