The weekend just gone was unlike any other in modern box-office history. Only two of the top ten films in North America were traditional mainstream studio releases, according to veteran analyst Tom Brueggemann — and across the top twenty, only six came from the major studios. In fifteen years of Sunday box-office analysis, Brueggemann writes, he has never seen a more remarkable line-up of top-grossing films in American and Canadian theatres.
The numbers back him up. The overall market took around $116.35 million, according to Box Office Mojo — up 82.4 percent on the previous weekend and nearly double the sleepy Halloween frame. Brueggemann puts the total higher, at about $122 million, but on either count this was the best first weekend of November since the pandemic, and almost double the same weekend a year ago.
A third of tickets were for subtitled films
The most striking statistic is the language split. Over a third of the tickets sold this weekend were for non-English-language films presented with subtitles, totalling around $42 million, according to Brueggemann. Godzilla Minus Zero, a Japanese-language film, won the weekend outright with $31.61 million. Ramayana, an Indian epic in five languages, took seventh place with $6.24 million in North America. Between them, the two films alone account for nearly $38 million of the weekend.
The six studio releases in the top twenty — The Cat in the Hat and Clayface from Warner Bros., Street Fighter and The Heart of the Beast from Paramount, Resident Evil from Sony and Verity from Amazon MGM — combined for only about 27 percent of the weekend’s estimated total, according to Brueggemann. The rest belonged to independents, foreign distributors and specialty labels: GKIDS, Angel Studios, A24, Searchlight and Sony’s Indian release.
What it means
The weekend’s top ten tells the story in miniature: a Japanese monster movie at number one, a Dr. Seuss cartoon at two, a Revolutionary War musical at three, a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes at four, a DC horror film at five, an Indian mythological epic at seven and a Martin McDonagh dark comedy at eight — with a faith-based film, Jimmy, opening in tenth. Three new films in the top five were finally enough to dislodge last weekend’s accumulation, with only You Can See Everything hanging on as the premium screens went to the newcomers.
For the industry, the weekend is a reminder that the audience is wider than the studio slate. A subtitled Godzilla sequel, a three-hour Indian epic and a $10 million musical about the American Revolution all found big audiences on the same weekend — and the market nearly doubled for it. Whether the studios learn the lesson is another question, but the box office has already given its answer.
Related: Godzilla Minus Zero Confirms $31.6M Record Opening Weekend | Ramayana Is World’s No. 2 Film of the Weekend With $52M
