Box Office Report for the Week of November 16

Before Wicked: For Good inevitably takes over next week, it was Now You See Me: Now You Don’t’s time to shine, as the third installment in the highly lucrative trilogy predictably beat out Edgar Wright‘s readaptation of Stephen King‘s The Running Man, with a $21.3 million domestic tally, and a $75.5 million global cume.

It’s not hard to understand why the Now You See Me franchise is popular, and why Lionsgate knew that greenlighting a fourth installment before the third film came out was a safe bet. A-listers doing magic heists? Who doesn’t love this concept! Even if the second movie wasn’t as critically well-received as the first, it still made lots of money, and there wouldn’t be a world where the third entry wouldn’t at least turn a profit.

As for The Running Man, the movie will likely not turn a profit, as its hefty $110 million price tag is unfortunately not looking like Paramount will see it back, with the film opening at a meager $17 million domestically, and a global tally of $28.2 million.

That said, it still isn’t as bad as the diminishing returns NEON and Osgood Perkins have been experiencing, ever since Longlegs was hyped up as one of the greatest horror movies ever made, and The Monkey was promoted as a film so violent TV stations refused to show any promotional material on the movie (which makes sense, since no TV promoter allows violence to be shown in any case during commercials, but the studio still made a massive deal out of it to hype up audiences).

Their latest endeavor, Keeper, was not only poorly received by critics but also received a dismal $2.5 million opening, which pales in comparison to Longlegs’ staggering $22.5 million opening and even The Monkey‘s $14.2 million opening. Of course, these films did not cost much money, but it’s still a massive failure on both NEON and Perkins’ part, who are still continuing their collaborations with the upcoming The Young People, starring Lola Tung, Nico Parker, Heather Graham, Tatiana Maslany, Johnny Knoxville, and Nicole Kidman, set to be released in theatres next year.

Here is the full list of the top ten films of the weekend:

1. Now You See Me: Now You Don’t (Lionsgate): $21.3M – 3,403 theatres
2. The Running Man (Paramount): $17.0M – 3,534 theatres
3. Predator: Badlands (Disney): $13.0M (-68%) – 3,725 theatres
4. Regretting You (Paramount): $4.0M (-40%) – 2,709 theatres
5. Black Phone 2 (Universal): $2.65M (-49%) – 2,419 theatres
6. Nuremberg (Sony): $2.60M (-33%) – 1,830 theatres
7. Keeper (NEON): $2.5M – 1,950 theatres
8. Sarah’s Oil (Amazon MGM Studios): $2.3M (-45%) – 2,410 theatres
9. Bugonia (Universal): $1.6M (-53%) – 1,253 theatres
10. Chainsaw Man: The Movie – Reze Arc (Sony): $1.6M (-53%) – 1,420 theatres

Source: Comscore