Brad Pitt-Led Bullet Train Easily Tops The Box Office, But There’s Some Work Left To Do

The fast-paced, high-energy Bullet Train sped into the box office station this weekend and will come out the other side relatively on time. The action movie, which stars Brad Pitt as a thoughtful assassin just trying to do a quick smash-and-grab job, took a big step toward paying for itself and delivering on expectations with a solid performance over its first three days. Current estimates have it taking home more than thirty million dollars this weekend, which is a really solid start but not exactly a dream scenario for a movie that reportedly cost around $90M to make.

You can check out how Bullet Train faired, along with everything else in the Top 10 below…

Bullet Train's Opening Weekend Is Perfectly Solid

There's always a rush to quickly label newly released movies as either big winners or big losers, but a lot of films have a debut that fall somewhere between those extremes. That's how I would look at Bullet Train. On the one hand, it's an action film with a $90M budget that stars Brad Pitt and was getting a fair amount of positive word of mouth. I'm sure the studio had fantasies of a spectacular box office run, and I get it. On the other hand, it's not part of a franchise, its source material isn't that well known outside the target demographic, and the supporting cast, while great, isn't exactly Ocean's 11. 

The film's financial future will likely depend greatly on how things look next weekend. The movie has been getting positive word of mouth. It went over very well in the screening I saw, and it's rolling at a B+ on CinemaScore. If people tell their friends and a good percentage of them turn up, and it's able to have a pretty solid hold, it'll likely be in good shape for a nice little box office run leading into streaming. If it has a weaker than expected second weekend, it likely won't have a ton of long-term legs.

Nope Is About To Cross $100M

Jordan Peele's third movie, Nope, continues to do steady business at the box office. His latest horror film, which has gotten pretty positive reviews from critics and a range of responses from audiences, made an additional eight million plus this weekend and will very shortly pass $100M at the domestic box office, per The Numbers. As a comparison, Peele's first film, Get Out, did $175M and change at the local box office and his second film, Us, also did $175M and change at the box office.

It seems unlikely Nope will get to that figure during its initial release, but with a budget reportedly in the $60-$70M range, that's still pretty solid business. No doubt it'll be very widely consumed once it hits streaming services, as well. There's still some time on that, however, as the film is only in its third weekend of release.

Everything Else

There's nothing too crazy at the box office this weekend, but I will shoutout a few interesting things from my perspective. First, a huge shout-out has to go to Top Gun: Maverick for somehow still being the number six movie in its eleventh weekend after release. That's an incredible stat. A lot of movies don't even make it five weeks in the top ten, let along eleven weekends in the top six. What a run.

Jo Koy's Easter Sunday also opened to steady business. The delightful comedy was expected to make somewhere in the mid-single digits per Deadline, and it achieved exactly that. It'll be interesting to see how well that movie holds moving forward, though. Did those it was seeking to reach all make it a point to go the first weekend or will there be any word of mouth to keep it at this level for a few more weekends?

We'll see next weekend when you can check back here for more box office coverage.