‘Weapons’ at $15M+ Before ‘Kpop Demon Hunters’ Opens

SATURDAY AM: Warner Bros/New Line’s third weekend of Zach Cregger’s Weapons is coming in stronger than anticipated with $4.67M yesterday on its way to a $15M+ weekend. Earlier week forecast was at $13.5M.

The swing factor here is Netflix/Sony Pictures Animation’s Kpop Demon Hunters Singalong which isn’t on any box office charts this AM; not so much because Netflix isn’t reporting and burying their figures in ComScore, but any kind of indication of that anime movie’s success won’t be apparent until tonight into tomorrow AM. Again, lowball estimates have the second-most watched Netflix title (210.5 million global views) at around $15M+ as well at 1,700 sites.

Currently, the overall weekend for all titles is weighing in at $64M, but if Kpop does what it’s suppose to do, then the whole marketplace shoots up to $79M+, which wouldn’t be the lowest grossing frame of the year. Currently that belongs to March 14-16 when Novocaine numbed audiences, with all titles doing $52.1M. A year ago, the entire weekend posted $88.8M led by the fifth weekend of Deadpool & Wolverine ($18.3M). Kpop Demon Hunters is only playing today and Sunday at most circuits minus AMC, which is holding the line on theatrical windows.

Running cume for Weapons by Sunday looks like $115.2M.

With more kids heading back to college (65% were on break Friday, which will fall to 25% on Monday), the arthouse box office has been flooded with edgy and some auteurish films including Focus Features Honey Don’t! ($3.2M opening), Bleecker Street’s David Mckenzie directed Relay ($2M estimated), A24’s Nhe Zha II ($1.4M), Vertical/AGC Studios’ Eden from Ron Howard ($1.36M) and NEON’s Splitsville from Michael Angelo Covino (estimated $90K at 5 locations in what is the weekend’s best theater average at $18K). It’s almost like an advertisement for the specialty sector itself. This is par for the course as August tees up potential awards season titles, and begins to set the table for the fall, letting upscale and sophisticated moviegoers know that more serious fare is on the marquee. Still, nothing is breaking out here with soft ticket sales all around except for Splitsville.

Top 10:

Honey Don’t! is doing 33% more money on less screens than Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s previous Focus Features Lesbian comedy caper, Drive Away Dolls which opened to $2.4M with a $1K theater average and a C CinemaScore. Honey Don’t!’s is $2,4k per screen. No CinemaScore, but the audience isn’t excited about this single Coen brother comedy like they were with No Country for Old Men, giving it 43% on Rotten Tomatoes audience and a horrible 1 1/2 stars and 28% definite recommend on Screen Engine/Comscore’s PostTrak. Those who showed up for the Margaret Qualley, Chris Evans and Aubrey Plaza romp were women at 54% with 62% Caucasian, 20% Hispanic and Latino, 7% Asian American and 7% Black. No PLFs, but a lackluster result despite hitting its tracking. The movie’s play is on the coasts with NYC AMC Lincoln Square earning $24K to date.

When it comes to these arthouse releases, many of these distributors aren’t spending much on P&A, including Bleecker Street and Vertical. It’s how this post pandemic indie model largely works to tee up films in theatrical in order to send them to home entertainment where the real cash is made.

Relay, with good critic Rotten Tomatoes scores of 75% certified fresh is seeing its best playability in East, South, Midwest and West with AMC Lincoln Square NYC up to around $5K so far, the pic’s highest grossing venue in North America. The Riz Ahmed-Lily James-Sam Worthington action thriller world premiered at TIFF last year and Bleecker Street acquired the pic two months later. Movie follows a broker of lucrative payoffs who is between corrupt corporations and the individuals who threaten them. He breaks his own rules when a new client seeks his protection to stay alive.

China’s animated Ne Zha 2, the fifth highest grossing movie of all-time at $2.15 billion, already played at the domestic box office back in February with a Mandarin language print that grossed $20.9M. A24 is handling this English re-release which isn’t making a dent at $1.4M at 2,228 theaters or $628 per screen. A 91% general audience and 8% family turnout. Overall audiences gave it 85% positive and a 61% definite while kids under 12 awards it 86% positive, but a lower 43% definite recommend. Friday was $696K. By the way, we heard A24’s release of Apple’s Spike Lee movie Highest 2 Lowest this past week at 100 locations did north of $1.5M, a solid per screen of $15K per sources. The Denzel Washington based on Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 Japanese film High and Low continues to play in theaters this weekend.

We’ll get more into Vertical’s save of the Ron Howard multi-star period thriller Eden later this weekend, but after a $640K Friday it’s putting up a $1.36M opening which is better than Vertical’s Jude Law thriller The Order from December which debuted to $887K and ended its run at $2M domestic. Eden cost $55M gross before P&A with a net production cost of $35M; the movie largely funded by Australian tax incentives and foreign sales. Offers made to AGC Studios for domestic weren’t good enough for this Sydney Sweeney, Jude Law, Vanessa Kirby, Ana de Armas, and Daniel Bruhl movie. Why didn’t distribs jump on this movie? Because it came out of its TIFF world premiere with middling reviews (currently at 55% Rotten), making it a risky theatrical investment. Vertical didn’t pay a minimum guarantee, they were only on the hook for a very small P&A commitment with a distribution fee in the low to mid-teens. Eden is on a 30-day exclusive theatrical window before PVOD. In a marketplace where the agencies have a number of unsold starry movies, here’s one path for mid-sized priced indie movies to the big screen. Rotten Tomatoes audiences like the movie better than critics at 69%. Like Sweeney’s Americana last weekend, Eden wasn’t positioned to be a double-digit P&A spend wide release; it’s a niche play. At 664 theaters Eden is posting a $2K theater average vs. Americana‘s $500K opening at 1,146 sites which did $436 per theater.

FRIDAY AM: Only one reported preview last night and that’s Focus Features’ Ethan Coen-directed and co-written Honey Don’t!, which did $525,000 in both Thursday and early previews ahead of its 1,300-theater opening Friday, The frame is expected to be between $3M-$4M. Unlike other indie releases on the marquee this weekend, Honey Don’t! is playing on a full schedule at theaters, not split.

It’s Coen’s second feature with wife Tricia Cooke on which they both wrote and produce; she has long edited for the Coen brothers. Coen and Cooke’s previous movie, which also starred Margaret Qualley, was 2024’s Drive-Away Dolls, which did $450K in previews on its way to a not wowing $2.4M opening at 2,280 theaters. Reviews were much better on Drive-Away Dolls at 64% fresh than for Honey Don’t!, which stands at 49% on Rotten Tomatoes. The latest movie follows a Western small-town private eye played by Qualley who is try to solve a local case involving a sex-crazed preacher played by Chris Evans. Meanwhile, she’s having an affair with a cop played by Aubrey Plaza. The $20M Working Title production was the closing movie at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Meanwhile, New Line’s Weapons passed the century mark Thursday at the domestic box office with a $2.4M take for the day, off 11%. The movie ends week 2 with $36.2M, down 43%, for a running cume of $100.2M. The original movie is soaring 42% ahead of another New Line August horror release, Annabelle: Creation, which stood at $64M after two weeks and finaled at $102M stateside.

Weapons’ third weekend is expected to be around $13.5M, with sources believing that Netflix/Sony Pictures Animation’s Kpop Demons Hunters sing-along in its mere Saturday and Sunday play sans AMC will outstrip the horror pic with around $15M+. If the anime movie falls short, it’s only because it was frontloaded. But sources are going nuts for it.

Week’s top 5: