Kingsman: The Golden Circle Dethrones It From Top Of The Box Office While LEGO Ninjago Becomes Surprise Box Office Dud

September 2017 kept on rolling with great box office results as Kingsman: The Golden Circle won the frame and grossed $39 million. While that number came in a bit below expectations that had this movie coming in around $45 million for the frame, that is still an 8% improvement over its predecessor's opening weekend, which is pretty solid given how many sequels have underperformed compared to their past entries this year. This one also held well throughout the weekend (it went up about 25% from Friday, without Thursday night box office, to Saturday), so it might hold decently in the weeks to come. At the very least, I'd imagine it finishes its domestic run at about $100 million exactly, well below its predecessor but not bad overall.



Continuing to make serious bank was It, which went down 50% this weekend to add another $30 million to its domestic cume. Pennywise The Dancing Clown has now grossed a massive $266.3 million. It's only $27.2 million away from overtaking The Sixth Sense as the biggest supernatural horror movie ever made domestically (without taking inflation into account). This one's on track for a final domestic gross of at least $325 million, which is absolutely outstanding for this lower-budget (remember, It only cost $35 million) horror film.

The newest animated movie to suffer domestic box office woes this year came in the form of The LEGO Ninjago Movie, which vastly underperformed contrary to expectations and opened to only $21.1 million. That opening weekend is only 24% higher than the opening day of The LEGO Movie and also only 40% of what The LEGO Batman Movie brought in just this past February. Among past late September animated family fare, it's less than half of the opening weekends of both Hotel Transylvania movies as well as Open Season and even ended up $100,000 behind the opening weekend of fellow Warner Bros. September animated feature Storks and that one didn't even have a big brand name like LEGO to prop itself up. It's also worth noting that this is the second worst opening weekend ever for a movie opening in over 4,000 theaters (Ninjago debuted in 4,047 theaters), only behind the disastrous $8.3 million bow of The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature.

Why did LEGO Ninjago open not just lower but severely lower than past LEGO movies? A lack of emphasis on connecting to the non-kids viewers that turned the past two LEGO features into box office hits certainly hurt the production while the novelty of Ninjago was further hindered by the fact that, to my utter shock, the Cartoon Network Ninjago TV show is still airing new episodes. The bad news just keeps on rolling for this title considering that the LEGO movies are the rare animated movie franchise that does way better domestically than overseas, meaning these Ninjas can't even look to foreign territories to compensate for a meek domestic performance. Look for LEGO Ninjago to end its domestic run around $70 million, which would be only $1 million more than what The LEGO Movie made in its opening weekend.

And now we move on to the rest of the holdovers. Going down 58% in its second weekend was American Assassin, which meant it added $6.2 million to a domestic gross that now stands at $26.1 million. This one appears to be heading for a final domestic gross in between $35 and $40 million. Home Again had the smallest weekend-to-weekend drop in the entire top 12 as it eased only 36% to add another $3.3 million to its domestic cume that now stands at $22.3 million. Will this one stick around long enough to become only the tenth movie ever from Open Road Films to crack $30 million domestically? We shall see. Meanwhile, the endlessly controversial Mother! actually held better than average in its second weekend for a movie that garnered an F CinemaScore as it dropped 56%, which is 2% better than fellow F CinemaScore receiver The Box from eight years ago. That means Mother! grossed another $3.2 million and it's now grossed $13.4 million domestically. Looks like this one is unlikely to cross $20 million domestically.

Newbie horror film Friend Request did terrifying business this weekend as it grossed only $2.4 million at 2,573 locations for a per-theater average of only $933. That's the worst opening weekend ever for a movie opening in over 2,500 and it's a guarantee that the actual box office numbers for its opening weekend are gonna come in even lower since Entertainment Studios is insanely predicting it'll go down only 6% from Saturday to Sunday. Oh, and holdover The Hitman's Bodyguard just won't die as newbie R-rated action movie Kingmsna 2 coming onto the scene couldn't even get it to drop over 50% as Hitman's Bodyguard went down 48% to gross another $1.5 million for a fantastic current domestic haul of $73.5 million.

Barely qualifying as a limited release as it opened in 574 theaters was Stronger, which bowed to underwhelming numbers in its opening weekend as it grossed only $1.7 million for a $3,045. While not awful, distributor Roadside Attractions has seen bigger launches in the past when opening in significantly fewer theaters. For instance, Arbitrage opened to $2 million in 197 locations back in September 2012 and Friends With Kids also grossed $2 million at 369 locations. With an opening weekend like this one, it'll take extraordinary box office stamina to get this one past $10 million.

Likely going through its last weekend in the top ten, Wind River grossed another $1.2 million, a 51% drop from last weekend, good for a domestic total of $31.6 million. Spider-Man: Homecoming kept on chugging as it grossed another $1.1 million this frame (a 41% drop from last weekend) for a domestic gross of $331.8 million. Oh, and Brad's Status expanded into 453 locations and garnered a decent $1 million for a per-theater average of $2,210. This one's garnered $1.1 million at the domestic box office after ten days of release.

It was a strong weekend in the limited release sphere as a trio of titles launched to strong numbers that had each grossing over $20,000 per theater. Battle Of The Sexes got off to a terrific start in limited release, grossing $525,000 at 21 locations for a per-theater average of $25,000. I'll be very curious to see how this one does when it goes into 1,100-1,200 locations on Friday. Victoria & Abdul also got off to a strong start in limited release as it grossed $152,000 at 4 locations for a per-theater average of $38,000. Loving Vincent turned in great results in a solitary theater as it grossed $24,304 this weekend. No word yet on how much the new Kirsten Dunst drama Woodshock made this weekend.

The top 12 movies this weekend grossed a total of $112.4 million, the biggest 38th weekend of any given any year. At this point, three of the seven biggest weekends of box office ever in September come from September 2017 while the month of September 2017 has so far grossed $595.1 million, putting it only $31.5 million away from surpassing September 2015 to become the biggest September ever at the domestic box office.