'Night School' Top Of The Weekend's Box Office Class With $28M; Best Opening For A Comedy So Far This Year
Universal's Night School maintained its No. 1 spot over the weekend with an improved 3-day $28M after a great Saturday of $11.2M that was +18% over Friday. Know that percentage was even greater because if you have back out Thursday's $1.35M previews from Friday's $9.5M; the jump is really +38% between Friday and Saturday.
While many were predicting a $30M start for Night School, we can't emphasize enough that an opening such as this in a marketplace where comedies have starved is to be commended. For some studios, it's an uphill battle to post these types of numbers even with comedies that have great reviews (i.e. New Line's Game Night $17M) and it's the second time this year that Universal has debuted a comedy to $20M+, Blockers being the previous title at $20.5M. At $26.5M over 3-days, and $35.2M over five, Crazy Rich Asians was a breakthrough back in August for romantic comedies, which have also waned up to the point of that Warner Bros. release; Night School is raunchier type of comedy. The fact that a major studio can still open a comedy off a low Rotten Tomatoes score (in this case 31%) only provides continued hope to the studios that cannot. Critics are quick to praise those comedies that play to the top of an audience's intelligence or that reinvent the wheel, and the fact of the matter is that those types of comedies are far and few between at the box office. What works here with Night School largely is Haddish, because audience's like a discovery on the marquee, and it's truly her second big above the title vehicle post last year's Girls Trip, also a Universal and Packer production, which opened to a $31.2M, an opening that no other comedy has since exceeded.
Demos this AM for Night School were 50/50 male-female, 59% over 25 and a largely diverse crowd of 37% Caucasian, 30% African American, 24% Hispanic, 5% Asian, 4%.
giveaway.
Demos this AM for Night School were 50/50 male-female, 59% over 25 and a largely diverse crowd of 37% Caucasian, 30% African American, 24% Hispanic, 5% Asian, 4%.
Warner Bros.' Smallfoot kept on its path with a $23M start after matinees drove Saturday's business to $10M, +54% over Friday. Night School and Smallfoot capped off the second biggest September ever at the domestic box office per ComScore with an estimated $659.6M, -6% from last September's record $698.5M, and besting the previous second-best September in 2015 which was $616.4M by 7%.
CBS and Lionsgate's Hell Fest came in higher than the $4.7M we saw yesterday with $5M in 6th place. The pic cost $5.5M, co-backed by Tucker Tooley. Being a non-franchise unlike The Nun which pegged it out for 5th place with $5.4M in its 4th weekend, coupled with bad reviews at 38% Rotten, prevented this original genre IP from finding a wider audience. CBS was after the horror faithful and dedicated their marketing spend to guys over 25 and females 18-24; they're looking for greater green in the home entertainment realm.
Pureflix's Pinnacle Peak Pictures' Little Women came in small with $747K at 643 venues. The film wasn't at the 1,000-plus theater threshold as the distributor's previous faith-based fare. Their Hillsong earned $1.35M at 816 theaters in its opening back in September 2016 and A Question of Faith last September opened to $1M at 661, but they too were great misfires ending their runs just north of $2M.
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