• Box Office

World Box Office, September 24 – 30, 2018

Box office results can be confusing. You have to deal with the North American box office, made of the U.S. and Canada. You have the international box office, which includes every country outside of North America. Then you need to consider the worldwide box office, which consists of the addition of the two. When domestic and international are aligned, it’s simple. But when they are not, and the moviegoers of the world pick different titles, you can spin winners and losers in many different ways.

Which is what happened this past week, when the domestic box office champion was Night School. Following last year’s breakout performance in Girls Trip, Tiffany Haddish is back with director Malcolm D. Lee, this time around trying to stay out of trouble with Kevin Hart. They dominated the chart with $28 million, followed by Warner’s Smallfoot that had a debut of $23 million. Now, look at these two films from a worldwide perspective and you have the opposite result: Night School was second: 19 markets brought an extra $5.5 million, for a total of $33.5 million. At the top was Smallfoot, an animated comedy featuring the voice cast of Channing Tatum, James Corden, Common, and LeBron James, that launched in 49 territories and produced $14 million, for a worldwide total of $38.6 million. The overseas success was fueled by Latin America, where Smallfoot was the No. 1 title. Mexico alone produced $3.6 million.

Universal, the studio behind Night School, also had the No. 3 title worldwide: The House With a Clock in Its Walls. The Jack Black and Cate Blanchett fantasy film generated $12.5 million domestically and $9.5 million overseas, for a grand total of $23 million and $65 million since its release. Then we have The Nun, fourth in the charts with $ 21.6 million. But look at the international chart and The Nun is not just the most successful film of the Conjuring universe, with a global total of $330 million. It also holds the title of champion of the week in the international charts, comfortably ahead of Smallfoot with $16.2 million.

Considering a production cost of $22 million, The Nun also represents a spectacular financial success, a result attributed in large part to the enthusiasm it encountered in Latin American markets. Mexico is tops once again, with $21.5 million. Brazil generated $17million. And in the United States, it looks like one-third of the $110 million The Nun generated so far comes from Latin American audiences.

Among new entries, The Old Man & the Gun generated an impressive $150,000 out of five theaters, with audiences, perhaps driven by Robert Redford’s warning that this could be his last film as a star. Another impressive debut was delivered by Free Solo, a documentary that follows the incredible achievement of rock climber Alex Honnold scaling Yosemite’s El Capitan Wall without any safety gear. A production of National Geographic Entertainment, Free Solo generated $300,000 in four theaters and is now set to be another commercial success in a year that has already generated other notable and very popular documentaries, such as Won’t You Be My Neighbor? about Fred Rogers, and the Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s portrait RBG. Things don’t look so good for Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9, that fell 62.7% in its second outing to generate just $1.1 million. After two weeks, the total stands at $5.2 million.

Next week, we will witness the debut of the comic book adaptation of Venom, starring Tom Hardy. And of the much expected A Star Is Born, where Bradley Cooper, who also directed this remake of the 1937 original of the same name, portrays a famous country music star who meets and falls in love with an up-and-coming singer who happens to be Lady Gaga.

See the latest world box office estimates: