by Conan Simmons – October 19, 2020 – 6:01 pm
The weekend box office continued to increase this weekend of October 16-18. A substantial increase proving yet again that there is hope for cinemas if only Hollywood would commit and stop relying so heavily on New York City.
Two new entries pop into the Weekend Box Office Top 5. The first is the latest crime film starring Liam Neeson in action mode. ‘Honest Thief’ steals the top spot from last weekend’s winner ‘War with Grandpa’, which took second place. The other new film in the Top 5 is a rerelease of animated favorite from 1993, ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’. This makes two films originally released in 1993 to break into the Weekend Top 5 in 2020, the other being Halloween comedy ‘Hocus Pocus’.
Clearly audiences are longing for the halcyon days of the 1990’s as means of escaping the degrading politics of 2020 America.
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE TOP FIVE (October 16-18, 2020)
- ‘Honest Thief’ – $3.7 million – crime film (debut)
- ‘War with Grandpa’ – $2.5 million – family film (dropping 1.1 million, 31% decline)
- ‘Tenet’ – $1.6 million – science fiction (dropping 500k, 24% decline)
- ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ – $1.3 million – animated (rerelease debut)
- ‘Hocus Pocus’ – $700k – cult comedy (dropping 400k, 36% decline)
The total for the weekend box office is $9.8 million. That is a gain of 2.8 million over last weekend for a 40% increase. This weekend marks the highest box office since the weekend of September 18-20, 2020 when the total was $10 million.
‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ is often billed as ‘Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas’. This is because the studio at the time knew that would increase box office revenue by adding his name even though he was only the producer of the film. Henry Selick is the director of the picture. His work is often overlooked as an effect of the studio’s marketing.