On this sleepy Labor Day holiday weekend, audiences sought second helpings of zeitgeisty horror films from the past and present. With KPop Demon Hunters retreating to the bowels of Netflix, Weapons returned to the top of the box office, early estimates via The Numbers predict. It wasn’t the oldest movie in the top five, though. 50th anniversary screenings of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws swam into 3,200 screens, gobbling $8.1 million. Right behind ˆ, Darren Arronovsky’s latest, Caught Stealing, an After Hours homage to ’90s New York, based on a screenplay by Charlie Huston and adapted from his novel, held off Freakier Friday, in its fourth week, and Jay Roach’s remake, The Roses. With a top 10 dominated by sequels, remakes, and reboots, audiences chose original movies (even ones from half a century ago).
Weapons‘ return to no. 1 is another win for Warner Bros.’ surprising turnaround this year, which is due to betting on original filmmakers. These days, it isn’t enough for Blumhouse to sequelize previous hits or Disney to trot out another reboot of a done-to-death superhero team. One has to do something original, and WB made movies that exist outside the cinemas. Sinners, Superman, and Weapons delivered more than thrills, chills, and spills, but also served as conversation starters, prompting audiences to discuss what each film said about modern times. There’s meat on those bones that kept audiences picking long after the credits roll.
The same could be said for Jaws. After 50 years of home video releases, frequent airings on television, and widespread availability on streaming services, the original blockbuster got its revenge on a half-century of lousy ones. Audiences opted to see if the shark still worked (spoiler: it does) instead of being dragged by the gravitational pull of Austin Butler’s iffy star power. Butler’s vehicle Caught Stealing came in third at $7.8 million, but that’s not necessarily the death knell for Stealing. After all, Aronofsky’s films often start conversations, too. The director’s deeply unpleasant mother! and The Whale both cleared $40 million due to word-of-mouth, morbid curiosity, and, yes, an Oscar-winning performance. Aronofsky, having a little fun for a change, might garner Caught Stealing the positive word of mouth that has been reloading Weapons for weeks.
Proving the audience’s hunger for originality, the only other new releases this weekend were The Roses (no. 5 with $6.4 million), a remake of Danny DeVito’s adaptation of Warren Adler’s novel, The War Of The Roses, and The Toxic Avenger (no. 11 with $1.7 million), the long-delayed remake of the ’80s Troma classic. Roses is doing better than Toxie (though with a considerably higher budget and an inescapable trailer). But the latter is aiming for word-of-mouth to do the heavy lifting. Released by Cineverse, The Toxic Avenger‘s opening weekend looks very similar to its distributor’s 2022 hit, Terrifier 2, which grossed $805,000 on 886 screens. Toxic Avenger grossed $1.7 million on 1,995 screens, and both films opened at 11. If Toxic Avenger could do Terrifier numbers, Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman, who also shepherded a young James Gunn and has a cameo in Superman, could be the first unsung hero of the new superhero era.
Here’s the whole top 10:
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- Weapons
- Jaws (Re-release)
- Caught Stealing
- Freakier Friday
- The Roses
- The Fantastic Four: First Steps
- Bad Guys 2
- Superman
- Nobody 2
- The Naked Gun
