Box Office Analysis: The Biggest October Of All-Time Draws To A Close

Box Office Analysis is trying a new format where I take more of a larger look at a number of films at the box office instead of just one particular movie or topic. 

* Oujia actually did pretty good this weekend, making $20 million on a $5 million budget. Looks like Hasbro films finally has another hit, and Jason Blue can continue his winning streak in the realm of horror features. Anyone ready for 2jia in 2015?

*John Wick made $14 million, a decent sum (most non-Hunger Games and Divergent features from Lionsgate just don't do so hot), but I do wish it had done better. Such a fun movie, though I'm glad people saw it even if they somehow gave it a B Cinemascore.

* Fury was marketed more like an action movie than a conventional drama, which got it a decent opening weekend last week, but it somewhat paid the price for that approach this weekend when it lost 45%, the kind of dip action films face instead of the smaller drops some dramas face. This one should top out with about $65-70 million.

*Gone Girl continues to do excellent business, losing only 36% for an $11 million weekend. It's only a few days away from surpassing Benjamin Button as the biggest David Fincher movie ever.

*The Book Of Life had a larger than usual dip for a family film, losing 42%. With Halloween falling on a Friday this coming weekend, and then Big Hero 6 arriving the week after, this one will probably top out at $40 million.

* St. Vincent did alright with $8 million in its first weekend in wide release. Can't imagine this was an expensive movie, so this should be a minor win for The Weinstein Comapny.

*Well, the weekends big dud was 23 Blast, with its wide release only generating $652 per theater. And Stephen Lang thought those arrows he took to the chest in Avatarwere painful!

* Dear White People and Birdman Continued to show impressive results, People making $1.3 million this weekend which should be good enough to guarantee a wide release. Birdman meanwhile has made $2 million despite being in 50 theaters, phenomenal success that Fox Searchlight that will hope to keep going once the film goes into wide release in November.

*Whiplash is still in only 46 theaters, which is odd. Sony Pictures Classics said they're taking a slow approach to the movie ,but one has to wonder if it'll be able to leverage its buzz against larger titles in November and other big arthouse films in that month like The Theory of Everything.

* I know I'm in the minority, but I loved The Skeleton Twins so seeing its middling box office makes me very very sad.

* The Equalizer is guaranteed to hit $100 million after this weekend. It made $2.8 million this weekend, and it just needs $6.2 million more to hit that nine digit mark.

* Citizenfour debuted in limited release to good results, while Laggies, well, lagged, doing more underwhelming numbers.

* The year was up 9% over the same frame in 2013, a nice increase that continues the excellent box office this month of October has seen. Could this be the biggest October in box office history? Maybe, I'm not 100% sure, but considering there's only 5 days left in the month, we should know shortly.

* I'm not sure how Nightcrawler will do, but Open Road Films is at least giving it a sizable theater count at 2800 locations.