Tyler Perry is no stranger to having his movies be top at the box office. Going back to 2006, when he made his feature directorial debut with Tyler Perry's Madea's Family Reunion, the filmmaker has made five films that have opened up at number one... and now you can add another title to that list. Just as he did this time last year with a venture into horror spoof territory, Perry has once again put together a number one hit with Tyler Perry's Boo 2! A Made Halloween. You can check out the full Top Ten chart below:
The original Boo! A Madea Halloween was, strangely enough, the brainchild of Chris Rock, who created a fictional version of the film in his movie Top Five. Taking full advantage of the inspiration, Tyler Perry and Lionsgate worked together to make it a reality, and it wound up being one of the biggest box office earners in the franchise (just as its fictional counterpart was). Because of this success, Boo 2! A Madea Halloween became a thing, and now it too has won a crown.
It should be noted, however, that while the new movie did take the number one spot, it's not really a huge win in the context of other Madea movies - which have admittedly been released in all different seasons. Not only did the film make $7 million less than the first Boo! A Madea Halloween, but it ranks seventh of eight movies in series (behind Diary of a Mad Black Woman's $21.9 million take, and ahead of A Madea Christmas' $16 million back in 2013. Given that Boo 2! A Made Halloween was only made for a reported $25 million, it's still arguably a victory, but it doesn't look like this sequel will be considered one of Tyler Perry's best. That fits with its 8% Rotten Tomatoes score, but not it's "A-" CinemaScore grade.
While Boo 2! suffers when compared to other Tyler Perry movies, one light in which it shines is when it is put side-by-side with this week's other three wide releases. And to start at the top and the film with the widest release of the bunch, let's discuss Dean Devlin's Geostorm. The film didn't screen for critics before hitting theaters, making many wary about it - but what people discovered is that it is a disaster movie that is just as dumb as it appears. Thirty-eight reviews are now registered on Rotten Tomatoes with only five registered as positive, and Warner Bros. must deeply, deeply regret giving the production an insane $120 million budget. While the would-be blockbuster has made nearly $50 million in foreign markets, it's never great when your domestic opening weekend is only eleven percent of costs before marketing.
In contrast, Sony is probably much happier that they only gave Joseph Kosinski's Only The Brave $38 million, but probably still disappointed with the opening weekend results. The ensemble film about Granite Mountain Hotshots has earned some seriously impressive reviews, and yet the buzz wasn't nearly enough to turn this one into a big box office winner. It's possible that good word of mouth could help give this one some legs, and enough award season attention might be enough to inspire a re-release, but this one is looking like a dud out of the gate.
Bad as those stories are, nothing compares to the odyssey of Tomas Alfredson's The Snowman. The director has had some big success in the past with snowy thrillers like Let The Right One In and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but this one is a total mess on all fronts. It's been demolished by critics; has earned a "D" on CinemaScore (it's not even interesting enough to earn the notorious "F"); and to top it all off has opened at #8 with a crazy small $3.4 million take. The fact that it has a $35 million budget, the smallest of this unfortunate trilogy, does not really make the situation look any better.
Clearly this wasn't an impressive weekend for Hollywood, but hopefully things will look up next weekend. Just in time for Halloween is the next chapter in the Saw franchise, the Spierig brothers' Jigsaw; George Clooney's dark comedy Suburbicon, Jason Hall's military biopic Thank You For Your Service, and Marc Forster's thriller All I See Is You. Come back next Sunday to see how it all shakes out!
