by Conan Simmons – September 15, 2020 – 1:34 am
After some controversy over how Warner Bros. was releasing the box office numbers for Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi action film ‘Tenet’ the real numbers are in.
The Top Five for the weekend of September 11-13 saw only one new title make an entry while the other four experienced moderate to significant declines in revenue.
TOP FIVE BOX OFFICE (Sept. 11-13, 2020)
- ‘Tenet’ – $6.7 million – science fiction
- ‘The New Mutants’ – $2.1 million – fantasy
- ‘Unhinged’ – $1.5 million – action
- ‘The Broken Hearts Gallery’ – $900 k – romance
- ‘Bill & Ted Face the Music’ – $300 k – comedy
Science fiction remains dominate at the box office with ‘Tenet’, ‘New Mutants’ and ‘Bill & Ted’ representing.
Controversy over last weekend’s numbers for ‘Tenet’ revolved around rival studios complaining that Warner Bros. manipulated the numbers to inflate the weekend take. Some outlets have reported that the sci-fi spy picture took in only $9 million. Clearly the rival studios jumped the gun as that would mean the picture only declined a mere 29% since opening weekend. Keeping with the original numbers of $20.2 million the much touted movie has dropped a whopping 67% after opening.
So here’s ON GENRE’s breakdown of how the Top 5 performed.
‘Tenet’ dropped $13.5 million from last weekend for an official decline of 67%. It still holds the number 1 spot at that box office even with the substantial shortfall.
‘The New Mutants’ dropped $800,000 for a 28% decline. Not too shabby and even with less than stellar critical reception this X-Men spinoff from Disney must be faring better than ‘Mulan’ has on streaming as Disney still hasn’t released numbers from that after more than a week.
Russell Crowe action thriller ‘Unhinged’ maintains third at the box office with only a $300,000 drop for a decline of 17% from last weekend.
New release ‘The Broken Hearts Gallery’ debuted in fourth place knocking ‘Bill & Ted Face the Music’ down to fifth. The sci-fi comedy kept a strong showing at the box office even as it’s available on streaming. ‘Bill & Ted’ dropped $400,000 for a 57% decline from last weekend.
Not all theaters are open in the United States because the nation refuses to get its priorities straight. Drive-in theaters are seeing a moment of relevance not experienced in decades.
The total box office this weekend was $11.5 million with only three films grossing a million or more. The box office has yet to see a return to all top five movies grossing in the millions for a single weekend. The $11.5 million take is a drop of $14.4 million from the $25.9 million of last weekends Labor Day holiday. Marking a 56% decline overall.