Night School Takes Moviegoers To Class As Smallfoot Gets Off To Average Start And Hellfest Burns Down

A new Kevin Hart comedy, Night School, premiered over the weekend and like much of Hart's comedies over the last nearly five years since Ride Along cemented him as a leading man (man, where does time go?), it fared well at the domestic box office with a $28 million opening weekend. That's 4% behind the opening weekend of Kevin Hart comedy Think Like A Man Too and 16% behind the opening weekend of fellow Hart comedy Get Hard, but was solid given the $29 million budget of the project and was ahead of every other opening weekend for a comedy this year, dethroning the $20.5 million opening weekend of Blockers for biggest opening weekend for a 2018 comedy. Also worth noting that this was the fourth movie in a row for director Malcolm D. Lee to open to over $20 million on opening weekend.


In second place was fellow wide release newcomer Smallfoot, which ended up being another late September animated box office non-starter for Warner Bros. Opening to only $23 million, Smallfoot had an opening weekend slightly behind the bow of fellow Warner Animation Group title Storks when adjusting that 2016 feature for inflation. It also scored the third worst opening weekend ever for a movie opening in over 4,000 theaters, only ahead of The LEGO Ninjago Movie and The Nut Job 2. Smallfoot didn't really have a bad opening weekend per se, but it did further emphasize the struggles Warner Animation Group has had in creating films that can score the kind of box office PIXAR, Illumination and Disney Animation do on a regular basis. Like Storks and The LEGO Ninjago Movie, Smallfoot just didn't have either a premise or marketing that could captivate adult audiences who are vital for an animated family movie to really break out at the box office.

The arrival of a new family movie led The House With A Clock In Its Walls to drop 53%, a larger than usual drop for a family movie, and gross another $12.5 million for a $44.7 million domestic total. A Simple Favor continued to hold well as it dropped only 35% for a $6.6 million third weekend and a $43 million domestic total. In its fourth weekend of release, The Nun dropped 45% to gross another $5.4 million for a $109 million domestic total.

The Nun actually managed to outgross in its fourth weekend of release the $5 million opening weekend of newbie horror movie Hellfest. That's the third worst opening weekend for a CBS Films title opening in wide release and way below the usual opening weekend for a Serial Killer Thriller, it even came in below the $5.1 million opening weekend of Copycat from October 1995. Hellfest had a killer (sorry!) hook (a serial killer in a horror theme park) but the marketing failed to make either the victims nor the killer distinctive enough to make the movie stand out, like, say, the Happy Death Day marketing did.

Crazy Rich Asians had the smallest weekend-to-weekend drop in the top 12 once again as it eased just 34%, giving it another $4.1 million, giving it a $165.6 million domestic total, pushing it past the $163.9 million domestic total of The Proposal, making it the biggest romantic-comedy at the domestic box office since Hitch in February 2005 and the sixth biggest romantic-comedy ever at the domestic box office. The Predator continued to decline in its third weekend of release as it dropped 59% for another $3.7 million and a $47.6 million domestic total. In ninth place was White Boy Rick, which grossed $2.3 million, a 51% drop from last weekend, for a domestic total of just $21.7 million. Rounding out the top ten was Peppermint, which fell 52% in its fourth weekend of release to add $1.7 million to its domestic haul that now stands at $33.5 million.

Fahrenheit 11/9 fell a harsh 62% in its second weekend of release, grossing another $1.1 million for a domestic total of just $5.1 million. The final new wide release of the weekend, Little Women, grossed just $747,000, the worst opening weekend for a 2018 wide release that isn't called Beautifully Broken. In its second weekend of limited release, Colette held excellently, grossing $418,501 from 38 locations for a per-theater average of $11,013 and a domestic total of $638,932. The Sisters Brothers giddy-up'd another $244,091 from 27 locations for a per-theater average of $9,040 and a domestic total to date of $404,814. Assassination Nation collapsed in its second weekend of release as it fell 80%, the tenth biggest second-weekend drop of all-time, for a $202,817 second weekend and a domestic total to date of just $1.7 million.

Moving onto limited release newcomers, Free Solo was the biggest of the bunch, it grossed $300,804 from 4 locations for an outstanding per-theater average of $75,201, the best opening weekend per-theater average for any 2018 release, limited release or otherwise. Might we have our next 2018 documentary sleeper hit on our hands? Something tells me we just might! The Old Man And The Gun got off to a solid $150,000 start from 5 locations for a per-theater average of $30,000, a better opening weekend and per-theater average than the one seen by David Lowery's last film, A Ghost Story. Monsters And Men grossed only $130,979 from 18 locations for a per-theater average of $7,277 while Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. grossed $51,373 from 2 locations for a $25,687 per-theater average.

The top 12 movies grossed a total of $94.7 million, a bigger than usual sum for the final weekend of September.