The ’70s-style superhero movie pulled in $55 million in its second week in release, dropping only 42% and marking the biggest second weekend ever for October, sending the previous record holder Gravity (which netted $43 million back in 2013) floating off into space. It’s made almost $200 million in the U.S. alone, and crossed the half-a-billion mark internationally. Say what you will about the film, there’s something impressive about a movie carried solely by one of Joaquin Phoenix’s signature oddball character studies becoming a massive global hit.
A few new releases battled it out for second place. The winner was all together ooky: The Addams Family pulled in $30.2 million, with the animated film successfully finding the family-friendly counter-programming spot to Joker’s juggernaut. It has a good shot at hanging around for a couple of weeks, too, given its Halloween-friendly story and style. Unfortunately, the producers of Gemini Man probably had to take a cue from their film’s seeing-double lead performance and give themselves a good hard look in the mirror, because the Ang Lee action-thriller, which cost $138 million to make, brought in just $20 million in its opening weekend. It could prove to have legs, but audiences only awarded it a B+ Cinemascore, so Will Smith might be wishing he could have a talk with his younger self about box-office expectations, especially given that he made a film it’s impossible to see as its director intended.
The top five is rounded out by holdovers Abominable and Downton Abbey, with the former claiming the fourth-place spot with $6.17 million and the latter managing to hold onto the fifth spot with $4.9 million, despite being out for a month now and not featuring any men with severe psychological problems wearing clown makeup. The big screen adaptation of the PBS drama has now made $82.6 million domestically—perhaps Gemini Man should’ve billed itself as the continuing story of Call The Midwife.
In new releases, limp voice-app comedy Jexi landed in eighth place with $3.1 million, while Bong Joon ho’s Parasite—one of the current front-runners for best movie of the year—pulled off a real coup in limited release, landing in 13th place while playing at only three theaters. It’s per-screen average of $125,421 is the largest of the year, and one of the largest openings ever for a Palme d’Or winner in this country. Take that, all you pro-capitalism movies.
For a more detailed breakdown of this weekend’s box office, check out Box Office Mojo.
