‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ opens with a shocking $78M weekend
The video game adaption blew away the debuts of several 2023 debuts from major franchises.
Hello! Welcome to The Box Office Report for the weekend of Oct. 27-29, 2023.
1. Five Nights at Freddy’s
Weekend gross: $78M
Total domestic gross: $78M
Last weekend: New release
Percent drop: NA
“I’m sorry, what?” is what I actually said out loud as I looked at this weekend’s box office results for the first time and saw that Five Nights at Freddy’s debuted at $78 million.
That a bigger opening weekend than John Wick: Chapter 4 ($73.8 million), Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ($60.4 million), Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning ($54.7 million) and Fast X ($67 million).
I don’t know much about Five Nights at Freddy’s, but the movie clearly had enough built-in fans to propel it to an opening weekend this big, especially considering that the movie was also released on Peacock this weekend.
2. Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
Weekend gross: $14.7M
Total domestic gross: $149.4M
Last weekend: 1st
Percent drop: 56
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is a bizarre movie when it comes to box office performance. There would be serious questions about a movie that opens with $90M+ weekend but then has yet to crack the $150 million mark two weekends later. This isn’t a normal movie, though. It doesn’t play Monday through Wednesday (and has “Friday” screenings on Thursdays). Was that a smart strategy? Did Taylor Swift and company leave money on the table by not showing The Eras Tour during the week? I know that they wanted to make it a special “weekends only” thing, but what about people who don’t have off the traditional Saturday/Sunday weekend?
3. Killers of the Flower Moon
Weekend gross: $9M
Total domestic gross: $40.7M
Last weekend: 2nd
Percent drop: 61
Killers of the Flower Moon suffered a significant drop its second weekend, falling 61 percent to muster up less than $10 million on the heels of a $23.3 million debut.
4. After Death
Weekend gross: $5.1M
Total domestic gross: $5.1M
Last weekend: New release
Percent drop: NA
I had never heard of After Death, but a quick google shows me that it’s from Angel Studios, the group that brought us Sound of Freedom and its totally legit box office haul …
5. The Exorcist: Believer
Weekend gross: $3.1M
Total domestic gross: $59.4M
Last weekend: 3rd
Percent drop: 46
Yes, The Exorcist: Believer has outgrossed every other movie in the Exorcist franchise but the original, but the gap between these two films ($112.7 million worldwide versus $428.8 million worldwide) definitely justifies the changes coming to any future productions.
Box office numbers via The Numbers based on Sunday estimates.
