‘Terrifier 3’ overtakes ‘Joker’ to take first place at box office, ‘The Apprentice’ flops

NEW YORK – Options on the movie marquee this weekend included Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker, a movie about Donald Trump, a “Saturday Night Live” origin story and even Pharrell Williams as Lego. In the end, they were all defeated by a clown with an axe.

“Terrifier 3”, a bloody low-budget slasher from small distributor Cineverse, led the weekend box office with $18.3 million, according to Sunday estimates.

The film, a sequel to 2022’s “Terrifier 2” ($15 million in worldwide ticket sales), brings back killer Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) and sets him loose, dressed as Santa, in a Christmas party.

That “Terrifier 3” was able to notably exceed expectations and outperform both major studios and awards contenders was only possible because of the disaster of “Joker: Folie à Deux.”

After Sequel to “Joker” by Todd Phillipsstarring Phoenix and Lady Gaga, got off to a very slow start last weekend (and a “D” CinemaScore from audiences), the Warner Bros. release fell a staggering 81% in its second weekend, grossing just 7, 1 million dollars.

For a superhero movie, such a fall has few precedents. Disappointments like “The Marvels,” “The Flash” and “Shazam Fury of the Gods” achieved better second weekends.

Such massive rejection from audiences and critics is particularly unusual for a follow-up to a huge hit like 2019’s “Joker.” That film, also from Phillips and Phoenix, grossed more than $1 billion worldwide with a budget of 60 million dollars.

The sequel was more expensive and cost around $200 million. That means “Joker: Folie à Deux” is headed for a certain box office disaster. Worldwide, it has grossed $165.3 million in ticket sales.

“This is an outlier weekend if there ever was one,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “If you had asked someone a month or even a week ago: Would ‘Terrifier 3’ be the number one movie out of all these big studio, award-contender movies? “Having a movie like this shows that the audience is the final arbiter of what it makes at the box office.”

The slide of “Joker” allowed “The Wild Robot,” the acclaimed animated film from Universal Pictures and DreamWorks, to take second place in its third weekend with $13.4 million.

Good reviews for Chris Sanders’ adaptation of Peter Brown’s book have led the film, with Lupita Nyong’o voicing the robot protagonist, to gross $83.7 million domestically and $148 million worldwide. .

Young Donald Trump’s film “The Apprentice” Distributed by Briarcliff Entertainment in 1,740 theaters, it opened in a distant tenth place, managing a measly $1.6 million in ticket sales.

Although expectations were not much higher, the public still showed little enthusiasm for an origin story of the Republican candidate in an election year.

If the headlines had translated into ticket sales, Ali Abbasi’s film might have done better. “The Apprentice,” starring Sebastian Stan as Trump under the tutelage of Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), has been making headlines from its debut at the Cannes Film Festival to its last-minute release just weeks before the election. The Trump campaign has called the film “election interference by Hollywood elites.”

Abbasi’s film, set in the 1970s and 1980s, tested moviegoers’ appetite for a political film in an election year. Major studios and specialty labels declined to acquire it in part because of the question of whether a movie about Trump would turn off both liberal and conservative moviegoers.

“The Apprentice” will depend on continuing awards conversations for Strong and Stan to make a significant mark in theaters before voters head to the polls.

Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night” failed to boost its nationwide expansion. The film, with an ensemble cast led by Gabriel LaBelle’s Lorne Michaels, grossed $3.4 million from 2,288 locations.

The Sony Pictures release, about the behind-the-scenes drama as the NBC comedy show is about to air for the first time in 1975, will likely need to make a bigger impact on audiences to make it through awards season.

“Piece by Piece,” a Pharrell Williams documentary-biopic hybrid animated in Lego form, also hoped to achieve better acceptance among moviegoers.

The acclaimed Focus Features release, directed by veteran documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville (“20 Feet from Stardom,” “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”), opened with $3.8 million in 1,865 theaters.

But the debut of “Piece by Piece,” although low for an animated Lego film, was very high for a documentary. “Piece by Piece,” which earned the weekend’s best CinemaScore, an “A” in viewership, could do well in the coming weeks.

The film, which had a modest budget of $16 million, will also likely end up being the highest-grossing documentary of the year, if “Piece by Piece” can be called that.

“We Live in Time,” the dark drama starring Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield, had one of the best theater averages of the year in its five-screen premiere.

A24’s launch, which will expand nationwide next weekend, debuted to $255,911 and averaged $51,000 per screen.

Out of the success of Warner Bros.’ “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (which grossed $7.1 million in its six opening weekends despite its recent VOD release), the Hollywood bust has had a hard time getting going.

Low-budget horror, like “Terrifier 3,” is still a good bet in theaters, but this fall has been mainly characterized by bombs like “Joker: Folie à Deux” and “Megalopolis.”

This time last year, Taylor Swift was making a big push at the box office with “The Eras Tour.” This weekend, compared to the same period last year, it was down 45% according to Comscore.

Estimated ticket sales from Friday to Sunday at theaters in the United States and Canada, according to Comscore. Final national figures will be published on Monday.

1. “Terror 3”, $18.3 million.

2. “The Wild Robot”, $13.5 million.

3. “Joker: Folie à Deux”, $7.1 million.

4. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” $7.1 million.

5. “Piece by Piece”, $3.8 million.

6. “Transformers One,” $3.7 million.

7. “Saturday Night,” $3.4 million.

8. “My Hero Academia: You’re Next”, $3 million.

9. “Nightmare Before Christmas,” $2.3 million.

10. “The Apprentice,” $1.6 million.