Box Office: ‘The Woman King’ Tops With Strong $7 Million Friday

Sony and Entertainment One's The Woman King took the top spot at the box office with $6.85 million in its first day of release. It seems to set the stage for an $18 million opening. That is large enough to prevent me from yelling at you on Sunday and Monday if you don't show up for what you say you want to see. It is on par with Where the Crawdads Sing, which was released in July. It was the first big movie about women since The Lost City and Everything, Everywhere All at Once. The Viola Davis/Lashana Lynch/John Boyega action drama is the first in a while. Hmm......

The story of the all-female guard of the king in the 18th and 19th century is told in The Woman King. The film has received mostly positive reviews, with a current rating of 7.7 on the Tomatoes. The film earned an A+ from Cinemascore, which means you can ignore the controversy over the film's historical accuracy. This nonsense is no more genuine or indicative of general audience sentiment than sexism/racism-motivated protests over The Hunger Games, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Wonder Woman, and more.

The Gina Prince- Bythewood directed picture, penned by Dana Stevens from a story by Stevens and Maria Bello, was a hit at the Toronto Film Festival. A strong opening could put it in the game, even though it isn't explicitly positioned as an Oscar flick. The hope is that the $50 million film legs out like Crawdads to an over/under $85 million domestic total with at least some help overseas to make up the rate-of- return difference. This is the kind of non-franchise, star-driven movie-movie that Sony now has the freedom to make thanks to the lucrative pay tv first window deals they signed with. They seem to be on a roll with Crawdads, Bullet Train and Woman King.

Next weekend, The Woman King will face off against Don't worry darling. After which, both "not a white guy" flicks will have the field to themselves, especially outside of horror movies like Halloween ends and Black Adam. Over the next month, I hope the audiences correctly clamor for more non-franchise, inclusive, star driven, adult-skewing theatrical fare. They haven't gone back to Drew Barrymore's Whip It since 13 years ago.

Yesterday, A 24 opened Ti West's Pearl. The low-budget sequel to X opened with over a million dollars on Friday and is on track for a big opening weekend. It's on par with the $4.275 million debut for X this past March, which tracks as it's a sequel and a lot of people might have decided one horror romp with Mia Goth's murderer was enough. The well-reviewed and well-received (a B- from Cinemascore, which may be a record for an A 24 horror movie) prequel was shot right after X, so A 24 got two for it. My wife would like to see this one, so I will catch it later this weekend or early next week.

Small-scale results were opened by Searchlight Pictures. The charming but slight 1950’s whodunnit, with a backstage murder taking place amid the cast and crew of an Agatha Christie adaptation, stars Sam Rockwell and a delightfully against-type Saoirse Ronan as the gumshoes. With a low profile and little buzz, the movie earned over a million dollars yesterday and is expected to make over two million dollars this weekend. It's a shame. Moonage Daydream opened in 170 theaters, many of them IMAX or PLF, for a fairly decent per-theater average. The NEON release earned $580,000 on Friday for a likely $1.12 million weekend gross and an average of $6,588 per theater. Time will allow for me to catch it in IMAX.

Clerks III opened in theaters this week. The threequel earned around $180,00 on Friday for an expected opening weekend gross of $450,000 and an average of $563 per theater. The film will have made over two million dollars. God's Country opened with $96,000 on Friday and is expected to open with $262,000 on the weekend. The film was put into a semi-wide release by the company. The opening weekend for Confess, Fletch is expected to be $479,000 with a concurrent release. The new Fletch movie, which we have all read about for 25 years, has just been released.