“The Nun II” opens in the fall with box office receipts of $32.6 million
Warner Bros./New Line’s “The Nun II” heads into the fall box office with a $32.6 million opening weekend, making it likely that September will be a much better month for theaters than last year’s miserable slump year.
While “The Nun II” is well below the $53 million opening of the first “Nun” in 2018, it still meets pre-release projections and is also in a similar ballpark to previous films in the “Conjuring” series. It tops the $24 million opening of “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” during Warner’s day-and-date experiment in 2021 and is just under the $35 million opening of “Annabelle: Creation” from 2017.
“The Nun II” should be number one in terms of box office takings considering it receives a C+ grade on CinemaScore, but since the first “Nun” received a C on CinemaScore and the “Conjuring” films all had budgets of Less than were produced With a budget of $50 million, this sequel should be another solid box office success for New Line’s now ten-year-old horror franchise.
Even though its $32 million mid-September premiere won’t make big headlines, “The Nun II” offers the kind of support that theaters simply didn’t have in September 2022. A year ago this weekend, total revenues plummeted to just under $44 million, with monthly grosses falling to their lowest level in 25 years. Things are already looking better this month, with total revenue estimated at $88 million.
Also opening this weekend is Focus Features’ “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3,” which is also in line with pre-release projections with an opening of $10 million. That’s less than the $17.8 million opening of My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 in 2016, but more worryingly, audiences aren’t as excited about this threequel with a B on CinemaScore as an A- for his predecessor.
“Greek Wedding 3” opened third behind the second weekend of another threequel: Sony’s “The Equalizer 3.” The Denzel Washington film earned $12.1 million this weekend, down 65% from its $34.6 million weekend. This is in line with the $14 million second weekend for The Equalizer 2 in 2018, as the two weekend total reaches $61.8 million domestic and $107 million worldwide.
In fourth place is Shah Rukh Khan’s new action thriller Jawan, which has been captivating Indian moviegoers since its release on Thursday, grossing $7.1 million over four days from 827 theaters this weekend. “Jawan,” distributed in the US by Yash Raj Films, set a record for the highest opening day for a Hindi-language film worldwide at $16 million.
There’s more to come…
