Weekend Box Office: 'Girl on the Train' Dominates 'Miss Peregrine'

Another humdrum weekend at the box office turned out pretty much as everyone expected, with only one of three new wide releases doing respectable business and none of them delivering anything close to a hit performance. The thriller The Girl on the Train was the weekend's top movie, easily surpassing last week's number one, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.

The Girl on the Train, which was based on the best-selling novel by Paula Hawkins, came in almost in the middle of the range of estimates offered by experts ahead of its release. The film's weekend domestic gross came out to about $24.7 million, significantly better than the $18 million on the low end of projections but nowhere near the $30 million that some optimists had predicted. The good news is that the film cost less than $50 million to make, so if it can hold up well for a couple more weeks, it should at least make back its production budget.

Second through fifth places went to the top two films from each of the past two weeks. Miss Peregrine dropped about 48 percent from last week to take in $15 million this week. That's a decent hold, but it brings the movie's total domestic gross to just $51 million after two weeks, not such a good performance for a film with a production budget of well over $100 million. Fortunately, it's performing fairly well internationally, and that's taking up some of the slack. Its worldwide gross now stands at about $145 million, which still doesn't put it in the black, but it's getting closer.

Behind Miss Peregrine in third place was last week's number two, Deepwater Horizon. With a production budget even higher than Miss Peregrine's and a total domestic gross of $38 million, Deepwater is in even deeper trouble. And it's not doing very well overseas, either, so there's little hope that it'll end up being categorized as anything other than a major flop.

In fourth and fifth places were the top two movies from two weeks ago, The Magnificent Seven and Storks, with $9.1 and $8.4 million, respectively. The worldwide total gross of The Magnificent Seven now stands at about $134 million, which is marginally more than its $90-million budget. Storks has also earned back its production budget at this point, but neither film has achieved true hit status.

This week's two other new wide releases locked in sixth and seventh places, significant disappointments for both of them. Sixth place went to The Birth of a Nation, the Civil-War drama from writer/director/star Nate Parker. This one was supposed to be an Oscar contender, but mediocre reviews and Parker's involvement in a sexual-assault scandal dampened enthusiasm for the film. Its take for the weekend stands at about $7.1 million, a solid third less than the $10 million that most predictions called for.

The seventh place film was Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life, a young people's movie based on a series of books by James Patterson. Its $6.9 million take was not very far off from estimates, but it was an objectively a poor performance even for a low-budget project like this one.

Overall, this weekend's box-office business was off by about 10 percent from last week, and it was off by about 13 percent from the same weekend last year. Bad weather in the southeast United States caused by Hurricane Matthew likely slowed down the weekend's business, but even if business was off by the predicted five percent, the sluggish ticket sales still suggest that the weekend would have been lackluster even if the sun had been shining everywhere. This week continues the fall's trend of low audience enthusiasm and a weekly crop of movies that fail to achieve appreciable success.

Next weekend looks to be more of the same. Three new wide releases hit theaters, and projections indicate that they'll perform much like the three new releases in the three previous weeks. The Accountant, a thriller starring Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick and Jon Bernthal, will probably win the week with about $20 million. The comedy concert film Kevin Hart: What Now? will be the second-fiddle new release and will probably take in something a little south of $10 million. Max Steel, a low-profile sci-fi film will bring up the rear and will also probably fail to crack the $10-million mark.

It's entirely possible that Hollywood might not be able to produce a hit for the entire month of October, and by the time the next Marvel movie rolls around in November, audiences could be extremely hungry for something they want to spend their money on. Doctor Strange, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, opens on November 4, and it's almost certainly the next film that can even dream of flirting with a $100-million opening weekend.