Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children grabbed the top spot at the box office, banking $28 million for a modest start against its $110 million budget. The slow start isn't great news for director Tim Burton whose last two movies, Big Eyes and Frankenweenie weren't major successes in theaters.
Peter Berg's Deepwater Horizon had an even less exciting debut. It took second place, but only pulled in $20 million against its own $110 million production cost. Despite garnering generally positive reviews form critics and audiences, it is struggling to find the mass attention needed to get out of the red.
Jared Hess, the director behind Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, released his latest comedy, Masterminds, without much financial fanfare. Hess' movies tend towards lower budgets (Napoleon Dynamite was made for less than half a million) but Mastermind's $6 milllion sixth place start isn't a good sign.
Disney's Queen of Katwe has been getting rave reviews, but Disney chose to launch it last weekend in a very limited release. This weekend it expanded to around 1,200 venues and pushed up to seventh place, earning $2.6 million. It doesn't have far to go to earn back its $15 million budget, but unless a wider release and bigger marketing push are in the works that seems unlikely.
Both The Magnificent Seven and Storks saw sales infusions from foreign markets, covering their lower domestic performances and helping them into the ballpark of breaking even.
For the full weekend top ten, check out the chart below:
