Weekend Box Office: 'The Accountant' Exceeds Expectations

This week's top movie, the Ben Affleck thriller The Accountant, charged out of the gate over the weekend, selling considerably more tickets than most experts had predicted. The movie's total gross for the weekend still wasn't huge, though, and the weekend wasn't a very busy one for any of the films in theaters, new or old.

The Accountant had been expected, according to most projections, to bring in far less than $20 million for the weekend. The movie did considerably better than, pulling in nearly $25 million by the end of Sunday. That was good enough to take the top spot with ease, staying well ahead of Kevin Hart: What Now??, the film that, at least according to early estimates, looked like it was going to take the second spot.

What Now? finished pretty much in line with expectations, taking in about $11.9 million. Some projections had been bullish on the film, suggesting that it could bring in $13 million, or even more, but the reality turned out to be much more conservative. The film opened just barely higher than Hart's previous concert film, Let Me Explain, making clear that even if Hart's star has risen considerably since that project, there's still a limited ceiling for comedy concert movies.

Hart's second-place finish may not hold up, however, when final weekend figures become available on Monday. His film finished in a virtual tie with The Girl on the Train, last week's number-one movie, and when the dust settles on the weekend, there's a chance that that thriller might leapfrog the comedy.

Fourth place for the weekend went to Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, the number-one film from two weeks ago. Miss Peregrine took in $8.9 million and settled comfortably ahead of Deepwater Horizon, which earned $6.4 million for the weekend. Deepwater Horizon has been following in Miss Peregrine's footsteps since the two films opened together two weeks ago, and this weekend left their pecking order unchanged.

The top two movies from three weeks ago were next in line, but this time around Storks edged ahead of The Magnificent Seven, reversing the order that the two films had been in since their release at the end of September.

Last weekend's second-biggest new movie, the Civil War drama The Birth of a Nation, just barely remained in the top ten with gross earnings of $2.7 million.

While the news was good for The Accountant, it was hard to be excited about the overall performance of all the films in theaters this weekend. Despite exceeding expectations, The Accountant took in only as much - just about exactly as much - as the number-one film in each of previous two weeks; The Girl on the Train and Miss Peregrine each took in between $24 and $25 million during their opening weekends, and both of those films have dropped into second place in their second weekends. This autumn has yet to produce a hit that can stay on top of the box office for longer than a few days.

For Hollywood as a whole, things just keep getting bleaker as the fall wears on. This weekend's total box-office gross was down 8.5 percent compared to last week's, and this weekend's gross was the lowest in four weeks. It's not just the season, either; this weekend's gross is down a whopping 22 percent compared to the same October weekend a year ago, and it's down 28 percent from the same weekend in 2014.

Will it get better next weekend? Probably not. Four new wide releases will come to theaters next weekend, and yet again, none of them looks as if it has the makings of a big hit. Tom Cruise's new Jack Reacher 2 enters a market already saturated with thrillers, so the competition is likely to keep any of them from standing out. The best guess has Jack Reacher raking in the now-typical $20-$25 million, and The Accountant falling to number two, and so on.

Also new next week is the Zach Galfianakis comedy Keeping Up with the Joneses, a Madea Halloween flick from Tyler Perry, and a sequel to the horror film Ouija. None of these new films is likely to go beyond the $15-million mark, leaving a box office cluttered with movies that are failing to find large welcoming audiences.

After next weekend, Hollywood will go quiet for awhile, with only one new film, the Tom Hanks thriller Inferno, debuting on October 28. The weekend after that, things will get a bit more exciting with the opening of Marvel's Doctor Strange, a debut that could pull in more than $75 million.