Weekend Box Office: THE NUN Scares Its Way to The Top With Franchise Best Opening!

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The Nun easily took the number one spot at cinemas this weekend with a $53.5 million opening, the highest of any film in The Conjuring universe. Warner Brothers has done a terrific job of quietly starting this universe by not getting ahead of themselves and announcing an entire slate before the first film was even released. Instead, the franchise has grown in a way that feels organic to the stories and characters being depicted and the world has responded by rewarding it with loads of cash. The Nun is just the latest success story.

There are currently five films in The Conjuring Universe: The Conjuring (2013), Annabelle (2014), The Conjuring 2 (2016), Annabelle: Creation (2017) and this year’s The Nun. The combined budget of all five is $103.5 million and the global box office take is about $1,334,500 billion. Needless to say, this is an extremely profitable franchise for WB, and it’s no surprise there’s another Annabelle film hitting next year, as well as The Crooked Man, which is in pre-production.

Crazy Rich Asians had to settle for second this week with $13.6 million, but after an extraordinary three weeks at number one, and a still impressive drop of 38.1%, I don’t think anyone’s disappointed. Crazy Rich Asians is now at $136.2 million domestic, with more to come. Not bad for a flick that only cost $30 million.

Jennifer Garner’s Peppermint debuted at number three with $13.2 million. Critics weren’t thrilled with the revenge film, giving it a paltry 13% on Rotten Tomatoes and, with this low an opening, it doesn’t seem like audiences are too thrilled with it either. It’s a shame, because I feel like Garner deserves better than this. From what I hear, she was good, better than the material deserved, in fact.

The Meg dropped to number four this weekend, but still managed to earn another $6 million- despite The Nun gobbling up some of its intended horror audience- bringing its domestic total to $131.5 million. To me, the success of this film lies squarely on the shoulders of Jason Statham. If he wasn’t in it, The Meg wouldn’t have been half as much fun as it was. I feel like he’s been overdue for a big solo hit.

Rounding out the top five is Searching, starring Star Trek‘s John Cho. The internet search history thriller managed another $4.5 million, for a domestic total of $14.3 million.

Next week finally sees the release of Shane Black’s The Predator. Last I heard it’s expected to open to around $30 million. It will be interesting to see how this film appeals to current audiences. After all, the property is thirty-one years old. Also, The first Predator, which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger (and costarred Black) was a hit by 1987 standards, but none of the sequels made much of a dent at the box office. Lastly, there’s the issue of Black knowingly casting a registered sex offender for a small role in the film. Thanks to the brave outspokenness of Olivia Munn, the actor’s scenes have been cut, but still, certain people who may have gone to see The Predator could be questioning whether they should support the film at all now.

Our Editor-in-Chief will be catching the flick tomorrow, and will publish a full review for The Predator in the next day or two, so keep an eye out for that.

Here’s the full top ten. As always, worldwide numbers include the domestic takes, so if you need to know what the international numbers are you’ll have to break out the calculator.

Rank	Title	Weekend Take	Domestic Total	Worldwide Total
1.	The Nun	$53,500,000	$53,500,000	$131,000,000
2.	Crazy Rich Asians	$13,600,000	$136,260,000	$462,816,416
3.	Peppermint	$13,260,000	$13,260,000	$14,660,000
4.	The Meg	$6,030,000	$131,572,774	$491,972,774
5.	Searching	$4,515,000	$14,311,130	$32,011,130
6.	Mission: Impossible – Fallout	$3,800,000	$212,116,767	$726,616,767
7	Disney’s Christopher Robin	$3,196,000	$91,725,090	$142,925,090
8.	Operation Finale	$3,043,000	$14,107,446	N/A
9.	Alpha	$2,505,000	$32,447,518	$59,947,518
10.	BlaKkKlansman	$1,565,000	$43,454,530	$65,554,530

What do you think of the success of The Nun and The Conjuring Universe as a whole? Are you one of the people who have contributed to the $1.3 Billion the series has made so far?

SOURCE: Box Office Mojo