Weapons defends box office top spot from Nobody 2 and Freakier Friday

Unlike Justine Grandy’s cursed elementary school classroom, theaters were packed this weekend, with moviegoers going for another round with Weapons. Zach Cregger’s original horror movie, which features zero superheroes and one floating AR-15, is expected to win the box office for a second week, with $25 million, a slight 43% decline from last week. Proving that a movie can generate strong word of mouth without recognizable IP, even in our algorithmically scarred hellscape, Weapons stood firm against an onslaught of sequels and reboots. However, Freakier Friday‘s body swapping continues unabated, declining just 50% from its debut, for a second weekend total of $14.5 million, per Box Office Mojo‘s estimates. Nobody 2, the sequel to Bob Odenkirk’s COVID actioner hit, landed at third place with $9.2 million.

Fantastic Four: First Steps continued to tumble down the steps, earning $8.8 million on the film’s disappointing (for Marvel) box office take. First Steps‘ $247 million domestic total adds to an $468 million worldwide gross, which would be impressive if Marvel didn’t release so many billion-dollar grossers in its heyday. Even sans a baby-crazy Galactus, The Bad Guys 2 wasn’t far behind Marvel’s first family, stealing $7.5 million from families around the country in its third week of release. Meanwhile, Superman, which landed on VOD this week for the benefit of Peacemaker, ended its viability as a box office player by scooping up another $5.2 million.

We don’t know if it saved theatrical comedy, but The Naked Gun continues to hold up well, despite its regrettable preponderance of chili dogs. The comedy added another $4.8 million to its $41 million domestic gross. Naked Gun is also benefiting from word-of-mouth as moviegoers remember how fun it is to laugh in a theater with other people. They preferred the jailable sound of man’s laughter to other digital noise, apparently. Jurassic World Rebirth and F1 lapped up another $2.9 million and $2.6 million, respectively, as India’s Tamil-language action thriller Coolie and the re-release of Shin Godzilla shared the number 10 spot.

Here’s the full rundown:

1) Weapons

2) Freakier Friday