Hotel Transylvania 2 Scares Up Big Numbers, The Intern See's Lots Of Clients And Everest [Insert Mountain Pun Here]

For the first time in over 8 weeks, a new family movie entered the marketplace, and Hotel Transylvania 2 prospered in a landscape sorely lacking family films. This Genndy Tartakovsky film grossed $47,5 million over the weekend, about 15% above the opening weekend of the first film, as well as the second biggest opening weekend of Adam Sandler's career and the largest September opening weekend of all-time (not adjusted for inflation). Interestingly, four of the ten biggest September opening weekends now belong to features from Sony Pictures Animation.

Scorch Trials Burns Bright At Box Office, Black Mass Scores While Everest And Sicario Have Massive Limited Release Debuts

Summer may be over, but the sizzling heat of the Scorch was all audiences wanted this weekend, as Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials grossed $30.3 million over the weekend, a 6% dip from the opening weekend of the first movie, but still a decent sum, even if this one's price tag (a $61 million budget versus the first ones $34 million budget) means it won't be anywhere near as profitable as its predecessor. It's also unlikely to hold as well, due to forthcoming movies like The Martian providing much harsher competition for Thomas and his post-apocalyptic chums. 

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials Review

Even after watching both of these Maze Runner movies, I still have no idea who the main character of both features, Thomas (Dylan O'Brien), is. Is he a cunning fellow? Is he smart? Is he funny? Charismatic? Cocky? There's nothing here in terms of concrete personality traits, he just lumbers around and leads his ragtag group of 20-something comrades across various generic adventures. There's very little in the way of him connecting on an emotional level to his "friends", and while the very first scene of The Scorch Trials attempts to establish a "tragic" backstory to Thomas (he's separated from his mother as a kid), it never figures back into the films story.