Beetlejuice Beetlejuice bamboozles surprise underperformer Transformers One at the box office

Everyone naturally assumed this weekend would belong to Optimus Prime and company, no question. Instead, the ghost with the most scored a third-round atop the domestic box office. Meanwhile, Transformers One became one of 2024’s most fascinating financial misfires. But first, let’s talk about Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the surprise victor of the weekend. With Transformers One skewing more adult than expected and not getting much of a Saturday boost (like typical animated kid’s movies receive), Beetlejuice Beetlejuice had no trouble ruling the marketplace. This Winona Ryder movie grossed another $26 million, a solid 49% dip from the last frame. This feature now has a $226.8 million domestic total after 17 days of release. This September mega-hit is the second-biggest movie ever to launch in September, only behind the first It title. The good news just keeps rolling on for Tim Burton’s latest macabre creation, which should exceed $275 million by the end of its run.

Thanks to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’s continued success, this weekend propelled Warner Bros. past $1 billion domestically for 2024. That's only the second time this studio has surpassed the ten-digit mark in North America since COVID shut down movie theaters in March 2020. From 2008 (the first year Warner Bros. bolstered its annual slate by absorbing New Line Cinema's projects) to 2018, Warner Bros. hit $1.56-$2.13 billion each year domestically. The studio still has a long way to go to hit its pre-COVID heights. Then again, so does Disney and every other studio that isn’t either Universal or A24. We’ll see if a more consistent release schedule in 2025 gets Warner Bros. back to those 2008-2018 domestic box office highs.

Transformers One stumbled as it “rolled out” to the masses this weekend with a $25million domestic debut. That’s not just weaker than pre-release projections for a $30-35 million bow. It’s also middling in the realm of animated movie-wide releases. That opening puts Transformers One behind Encanto's North American debut (and that one burned off demand with a Wednesday launch over Thanksgiving weekend) and 2% ahead of The Emoji Movie's debut from seven years ago. The bad news doesn’t end there. Transformers One was also only 3% ahead of TMNT's March 2007 bow, 1% behind Gnomeo & Juliet's North American opening, and only 6% ahead of Open Season's September 2006 drop from nearly two decades ago.

Among animated September openings, Transformers One came in well behind the $30+ million bows of the first two Hotel Transylvania and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs installments. Its bow was much closer to the $20-23 million openings that plagued various animated movies opening in the late September corridor from 2016 to 2019. For instance, Transformers One was only $2 million above Smallfoot’s opening and just 18% ahead of the Storks bow. At least it opened $4.6 million ahead of The Lego Ninjago Movie in late September 2017. Sony Pictures Animation proved animated family movies can thrive in late September. However, rival studios like Warner Bros. and Transformers One distributor Paramount Pictures have struggled to make that lightning strike again.

Rubbing salt into the wounds, Transformers One procured the second-lowest domestic opening for a 21st-century Transformers movie, only ahead of Bumblebee's $21.6 million bow. However, that Travis Knight feature opened days before Christmas, which ensured it would have legs for weeks and weeks. That’s far less likely for Transformers One despite its great word-of-mouth. After all, The Wild Robot is dropping into theaters next week. Multiple family movies can thrive simultaneously in the final weeks of the year. It’s much harder to do either that or recover from an underwhelming bow in late September.

Prequels, as Furiosa can attest, are a tricky business. Transformers One scored the best reviews ever for a Transformers movie. However, its proposition of answering "how did Optimus Prime and Megatron become enemies?" just wasn't enticing to general audiences. General audiences don’t care how Prime and Megatron met. They care about them fighting against famous Earth landmarks. It didn’t help that the Transformers franchise has been way past its prime (no pun intended!) for years now. This saga’s been sagging financially for so long and an animated prequel couldn’t reverse the trajectory. Given that Transformers One was very frontloaded for a PG-rated kid’s movie ($3.3 million of its domestic opening came from pre-release screenings), this one could be looking at a domestic haul just south of $70 million. Chris Hemsworth, I’m so sorry, you’re just not a movie star.

Speak No Evil opened on Friday the 13th last weekend. As the 2009 Friday the 13th remake can attest, timing a horror movie's release to that spooky date can send your box office cratering the next weekend. After all, everyone already saw your title on an ominous opening day. Speak No Evil didn't fall significantly hard, thankfully for its financiers. Instead, it scored a solid $5.9 million second frame haul, a 48% decline from last weekend. True, this horror title's only grossed $21.4 million to date, but it should get past $30 million domestically. That would be double its $15 million budget, meaning financial losses (if they even manifest) will be limited.

For some reason, Hollywood studios chose to launch two horror movies over one weekend this frame. The first of these was Lionsgate's $20 million budgeted Never Let Go, which only opened to $4.5 million. This is one of Halle Berry's worst opening weekends, coming in 55% behind Kidnap's bow from August 2017 and even making less than half of Moonfall's North American bow. There’s already so much horror cinema in the marketplace. You’ll need to come up with somebody really exceptional to stand out to audiences. Never Let Go’s marketing campaign never overcame that problem.

Deadpool & Wolverine eased just 25% this weekend to gross another $3.9 million. That brings its domestic haul to a staggering $627.4 million, Nine weekends in, Deadpool & Wolverine is still drawing in solid crowds. Reminder to Marvel Studios: keep cornering this late July/early August timeframe. Eschew the second weekend of July spot Thor: Love and Thunder and Ant-Man and the Wasp bowed in. Opening later in the summer lets these titles leg out all through September.

The other new horror title of the weekend was The Substance, which opened to $3.1 million. Mubi clearly hoped for a slightly better opening for this title. After all, it released this Demi Moore title in 1,700 locations. Plus, this feature had months of positive buzz after its Cannes premiere. Still, body horror has often had an erratic box office track record (heck, there are no reported box office figures for 1989's Society!), so The Substance playing in 1,700+ multiplexes is kind of a victory in and of itself. Amusingly, the title got a B CinemaScore, a tremendous feat given what an aggressively non-mainstream third act it has.

Reagan eased another 33% to gross an additional $1.9 million for a $26.7 million domestic haul. Debuting in 720 theaters this frame was Jung Kook: I Am Still, a music documentary about a BTS vocalist. It grossed $1.42 million over the three-day weekend and $2.5 million since Thursday.  Rounding out the top ten was Alien: Romulus. That Fede Alvarez directorial effort fell 44% to gross $1.32 million for a $103.6 million domestic haul.

The Forge dipped another 39%, for a fourth weekend gross of $1.25 million and a $26.3 million domestic gross. Next up was another Sony holdover, It Ends With Us. Grossing $1 million this weekend, this Blake Lively box office sensation is now up to $146.8 million. Tied with It Ends With Us in just its second weekend was Killer's Game. Also grossing an estimated $1 million this weekend, Dave Bautista's latest star vehicle fell 63% from opening weekend. With just $4.8 million domestically, there's no getting around it: Killer's Game is a flop.

Here's a fun fact for you: prior to this weekend, Whiplash never played in wide release in North America. Its peak theater counts back in 2014 and 2015 was 567 theaters, just missing that wide release threshold. Think about that for a moment. A movie that spawned phrases like "not quite my tempo" we're all still quoting today never played in nationwide theatrical release, yet long-forgotten 2014 titles like The Pyramid, The Identical, and Persecuted did. The world is wild. Damien Chazelle's career-changing movie finally played in 600+ locations this frame (695 to be precise) to celebrate the film's 10th anniversary. Whiplash grossed another $578,000 for an $832 per theater average. That's nearly 5% of Whiplash's original $13 million domestic cume. It also surpassed the domestic haul of multiple new release movies Sony Classics dropped this year. Let's count this one as an okay performer. Everyone, please show up for the 10th-anniversary screenings of Chazelle’s Babylon in 2032, I love that movie so much and it deserves more recognition.  

My Old Ass had a solid expansion into 33 theaters this weekend, grossing $281,842 for an $8,541 per theater average. After ten days, this title's grossed $512,301. Fingers crossed this feature can do decent numbers when it expands into wide release this coming Friday.

The hustle and bustle of award season technically lifted off this weekend with 2024’s first major post-Labor Day weekend limited release. That feature was A Different Man, a Sebastian Stan/Adam Pearson vehicle. It got off to an underwhelming $56,126 start at four locations for a $14,032 per theater average. Among 2024 limited-release opening weekend per theater averages, that's behind Eno, La Chimera, and Tokyo Cowboy despite having the A24 logo and Stan's star power. A24’s got a very crowded slate of new releases for the rest of the year. Thus, this one might quietly fade away in the coming weeks.

Also opening in limited release this weekend was In The Summers, which debuted at $10,950 at two locations for a $5,475 per theater average. Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field grossed $10,254 from a single theater. Also worth mentioning is that no reported figures have come in yet for Super / Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, which played in theaters on Saturday, September 21 courtesy of Fathom Events.

The top ten movies this weekend grossed $76 million, a disappointing haul largely down to Transformers One underperforming so severely. That's down 31% from this same weekend in 2019 when Downton Abbey ruled the box office. It's at least roughly on par with this timeframe in September 2018 when The House with a Clock in Its Walls captivated America. Still, in the pantheon of domestic September frames, this past weekend was firmly in the middle of the pack. Despite the presence of a new Transformers movie in the marketplace, this weekend barely made more than the September 21-23, 2012 weekend when End of Watch topped the box office with $13.1 million.

As I was talking about last week, a lack of variety in the marketplace is just hurting things. Everything except for Transformers One is horror-themed. With no burgeoning arthouse titles or rom-coms (to cite two examples) around, the box office can't really flourish. To be fair, this isn't a dismal frame for late September. However, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice's mammoth debut at the start of September 2024 suggested this month could go the distance as something special at the box office. With roughly $460 million to date, September 2024 has no chance of exceeding $600 million domestically. Most likely this month will end up with just over $550 million. That would put September 2024 behind nine other Septembers domestically.

A limited slate of new releases has led to things slowing down tremendously after Beetlejuice Beetlejuice's success. Deadpool & Wolverine's massive grosses in July 2024's final days were quickly followed up by August hits It Ends With Us and Alien: Romulus. That Tim Burton movie, meanwhile, has been picking up the slack for the entire month of September 2024. One hit can't sustain the marketplace We’ll see if seven new wide releases (counting My Old Ass expanding to 600+ locations) next weekend can close out September 2024 on a higher note.