September isn't generally seen as a month for box office goliaths, as studios usually deploy those titles either during the summer or in the final six weeks of the year, but there is still a history of big winners, and Tim Burton's Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has firmly put itself on that list. The film fell short of breaking the September opening weekend record set by Andy Muschietti's IT back in 2017, but it has nonetheless been dominant since its debut.
Josh Cooley's Transformers One put up a good fight, and audiences received new spooky season offerings with Coralie Fargeat's The Substance and Alexandre Aja's Never Let Go, but early returns show that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has won the weekend box office for a third week in a row. Check out the full Top 10 below, and join me after for analysis.
| TITLE | WEEKEND GROSS | DOMESTIC GROSS | LW | THTRS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice | $26,000,000 | $226,848,000 | 1 | 4,172 |
| 2. Transformers One* | $25,000,000 | $25,000,000 | N/A | 3,978 |
| 3. Speak No Evil | $5,900,000 | $21,455,000 | 2 | 3,375 |
| 4. Never Let Go* | $4,500,000 | $4,500,000 | N/A | 2,667 |
| 5. Deadpool & Wolverine | $3,900,000 | $627,284,625 | 3 | 2,450 |
| 6. The Substance* | $3,100,000 | $3,100,000 | N/A | 1,949 |
| 7. Am I Racist? | $2,536,000 | $9,007,507 | 4 | 1,600 |
| 8. Reagan | $1,666,659 | $26,527,335 | 5 | 1,850 |
| 9. Jung Kook: I Am Still | $1,425,748 | $2,574,318 | N/A | 722 |
| 10. Alien: Romulus | $1,326,000 | $103,621,150 | 7 | 1,350 |
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Sits At The Top Of The Box Office Again, Hitting $300 Million Worldwide
Last weekend, James Watkins' Speak No Evil proved to be relatively harmless competition for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, as the latter made $54.4 million in its second Friday-to-Sunday compared to the $11.4 million brought in by the horror remake starring James McAvoy. This time around, the race for the #1 spot is a lot tighter, but according to early Sunday results published by The Numbers, the Tim Burton film has won its third box office crown.
Weekend-to-weekend, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice saw its audience get cut in half again, but it still earned another $26 million – bringing its domestic gross to date to $226.8 million. That rockets the title up the 2024 charts, as it has now sold more tickets in the United States in Canada than all but five other major releases this year. Before the end of its run, it's plausible that it will rank as the fourth biggest film of the year, but it still needs to pass Lee Isaac Chung's Twisters ($267.2 million) and Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part Two ($282.1 million).
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was not an inexpensive film to make, as it was produced with a $100 million budget – but the backend deals that were made with stars and producers to reduce costs should end up paying off big. In addition to performing well domestically, the long-awaited sequel's audience is also growing overseas.
The movie is still performing much better in the United States and Canada compared to other markets, but it has now made over $100 million from foreign territories and has seen its worldwide box office total inflate to $329.8 million. It now stands as the 16th biggest worldwide release of the year, and it only needs $5 million to surpass Justin Baldoni's It Ends With Us.
Will the immense box office success end up motivating the creation of a sequel (one that would naturally be titled Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice)? Nothing has been made official, but at this point, it would hardly be surprising.
Barring Changes In The Final Numbers, Transformers One Has To Settle For Second Place
The box office numbers that are reported across the industry on Sunday mornings are obviously not final (after all, the weekend numbers ultimately include Sunday night showings), but if established sales and projections hold firm, Transformers One is going to be settling for second place in its debut. It's obviously not the most substantial premiere for an animated release, as this past summer saw the arrival of both Kelsey Mann's Inside Out 2 and Chris Renaud's Despicable Me 4, but it still made a respectable $25 million.
In the grander context of 2024, that number makes it the 21st biggest opening weekend of the year, as its more than Mark Dindal's The Garfield Movie ($24 million) but less than Alex Garland's Civil War ($25.5 million).
Transformers One has earned some strong reviews from critics, with some calling it the best modern Transformers movie, but its ticket sales aren't quite as powerful as its franchise brethren. It made far less than Steven Caple Jr.'s live-action Transformers: Rise of the Beasts from last year, for example – which made $61 million in its domestic debut. The animated film has made more in its first three days than Travis Knight's Bumblebee, which made $21.7 million in its December 2018 debut – but that film was hardly a failure, making $464.7 million worldwide before the end of its big screen run.
Never Let Go And The Substance Occupy The Middle Of The Top 10
While Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Transformers One battled for the #1 spot in the Top 10 this weekend, new spooky season arrivals Never Let Go and The Substance ended up in the middle of the pack, respectively taking fourth and sixth place. The creepy motherhood-centric story starring Halle Berry made $4.5 million, while the extreme body horror feature with Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley made $3.1 million.
Like a lot of other original horror titles, the big advantage that both films have is that they didn't cost a lot to make, with Deadline reporting that Never Let Go was produced for $20 million and The Substance cost $17.5 million. With Halle Berry earning acclaim for her turn and some including myself declaring Coralie Fargeat's movie the best of the year, both titles should have long enough big screen legs and legacies to ultimately see them be deemed successes.
Coming up, the final weekend of September is set to deliver another big animated feature – Chris Sanders' phenomenal The Wild Robot – and Francis Ford Coppola's auteur vision Megalopolis among other titles. It should shake up the Top 10, so be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday to see our latest box office report, and you can scope out all of the films on the way in the coming months with our 2024 Movie Release Calendar.
