The winner
David Fincher’s critically ravished Gillian Flynn adaptation Gone Girl is triumphant, thanks to a career-best $37.5m (£23.3m) US opening for the director, just edging out horror spin-off Annabelle. ($37.1m). (That record only stands without calculating for inflation. Panic Room’s $30m, in 2002, would be worth $39m.) Topping the global chart is no mean feat for what is ultimately a specialty flick (Fox have been using films such as Captain Phillips, Argo and The Departed as yardsticks). Compared to the director’s 2011 film Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – also drawn from a popular potboiler, but hobbled by an awkward, staggered Christmas roll-out – the studio opted to break Gone Girl big in 40 markets right out of the gate. It has done best in markets where the source novel sold well and the post-austerity emotional malaise that fills it has most resonance. So, again: Fincher bests in the UK ($6.9m) and Australia ($4.6m), and further significant No 1s in Russia ($2.95m) and Germany ($2.85m). But with thinner grosses further afield, and not many more major territories to come, you wonder if Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike’s marital woes can go the distance. Dragon Tattoo’s global tally ($232m) should be doable (and Gone Girl cost $30m less); achieving Benjamin Button’s ($333.9m) might be stretching it.
The runner-up
Critics seem to agree that John R Leonetti’s possessed-doll chiller Annabelle largely lacks the fear factor of its parent film, 2013’s The Conjuring. It opened slightly under the previous film ($41.9m) in the US, but it’s still the sixth-highest horror debut, and a bounce for a genre that, apart from The Conjuring, hasn’t seen a $100m+ global hit since 2013’s Mama. There’s little doubt it will be a steady little earner for distributor Warner Bros, firming up the franchise in preparation for a Conjuring sequel proper next October. Horror always translates well across different cultures, and many half-decent films with enough marketing oomph seem able to uncork primal urges and decent financial returns at the same time. Annabelle, in 15 fewer territories, has pulled in only $4m less than Gone Girl, with historic performances in some places. It had five No1s in Asia, with record horror debuts in Malaysia ($2.4m) and Singapore ($1m), as well as a strong take in Korea ($3m); perhaps Catholic-tinged satanic panic has as much exotic appeal over there as their lank-haired girl ghosts do here.
Made in China
Easily the biggest overseas gross of the weekend ($38m) was for Ning Hao’s divorce road-trip comedy Breakup Buddies. Most of that was the mighty Chinese domestic haul, neck and neck with the US openings for Gone Girl and Annabelle – more proof of how that country is increasingly closing the gap with America. That takes its running total to $93m, having opened mid-week on 30 September as the flagship release ushering in China’s Golden Week holiday. Comedy stars Huang Bo and Xu Zheng – playing a washed-up singer and his best friend on the pull from Beijing to the south-western city of Dali – are reigniting their schtick from 2012 indie smash Lost in Thailand. With Ning directing (he’s had a string of local hits, often starring Huang), it’s a true A-list confab. And audiences bit hard: its opening day ($15.9m) more than doubled Lost in Thailand’s ($6.25m), a sleeper hit that wound up China’s most successful local film. Breakup Buddies looks a good bet to top its eventual $208m. If you still think the story is just provincial chatter, then – in contrast with LIT’s afterthought US release – the followup opened simultaneously in Australia, New Zealand and the US, with a punchy $240,000 on 20 screens in the latter. The day Sino-blockbusters are routine exports may not be far off.
The God squad
The Lord smileth not on Nicolas Cage, at the box office at least. His $16m-budgeted end-times thriller Left Behind was bidding to become the fourth sizeable fundamentalist-Christian hit of 2014. A disappointing $6.9m opening leaves it quite a way off the pace set by Fox’s Son of God in February ($15.9m), the independently produced high-school drama God’s Not Dead in March ($9.2m) and Sony’s Heaven Is for Real ($22.5m). Maybe Cage’s star chops and messianic propensities can help close the gap overseas; some of the above found followers in Latin America, especially (though Left Behind has a rather optimistic Middle East-centric release schedule). But all four films taken as a trend, the Bible-belt is clearly no longer regarded by the film industry as a desert only touchable by acts of God like Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ.
The rest of the world
Plenty of foreign flotsam flooded the global chart this week. Though, typically, half of it was just Hollywood in disguise. Bang Bang!, Fox Star’s reworking of the 2010 Tom Cruise-Cameron Diaz vehicle Knight and Day, swept off with the No 1 spot in that country and No 6 globally. It’s a boon for leading man Hrithik Roshan, who underwent brain surgery after an accident on the set, and a massive result for Fox’s Indian arm, its first palpable hit on the subcontinent; perhaps the Bollywood monopoly is breachable after all. Fox’s all-purpose local-film unit, FIP, was also busy in South Korea, where its comedy Slow Video ($5.2m) pipped stem-cell-research drama Whistle Blower ($4.9m) to the top rung (and 16th spot globally). Another Golden Week release in China, Taiwanese cop-thriller sequel Black & White: The Dawn of Justice looks to have built on its TV fanbase and 3D tart-up, passing its predecessor’s $14.9m lifetime take in a single week. And, in 16th place globally, the fifth in one-man-band Santiago Segura’s Torrente series – about a balding, bigoted, Franco-loving Madrid cop – became Spain’s biggest opening of the year so far. Local films are flying there – a market share of around 25% - despite an industry that’s been battered since the credit crunch.
The future
No major worldwide rollouts next time, though Disney’s family comedy Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day – from the unlikely directorial hand of Miguel Arteta (Chuck & Buck) – kicks off in 20 markets, including the US and Russia. Guardians of the Galaxy finally adds its last major territory, China, where a respectable $100m+ show could see it leapfrog a number of titles to the No 2 position on the best-of-year list. Marvel have surely held it back to firm up its recognition factor elsewhere first, but it’s still an unfamiliar quantity for Chinese audiences, something that muted The Avengers’ take there. And Dracula Untold, which made clean puncture wounds at – hurrah! – the Romanian box office and beyond this week, could see proper box-office bloodlust kick in, as it expanding to the US, South Korea and Russia.
Top 10 global box office, 3-5 October
- (New) Gone Girl, $62.1m from 40 territories – 39.3% international; 60.7% US
- Annabelle, $57.1m from 25 territories. $60.1m cumulative – 38.2% int, 61.8% US
- (New) Breakup Buddies, $38.2m from 4 territories. $93.2m cum – 99.7% int; 0.3% US
- The Equalizer, $32m from 71 territories. $104.1m cum – 38% int; 62% US
- The Maze Runner, $28.5m from 62 territories. $193m cum – 61.7% int; 38.3% US
- (New) Bang Bang!, $25.4m from 9 territories. $25.4m cum – 94.6% int; 5.4% US
- (New) Dracula Untold, $21m from 25 territories – 100% int
- The Boxtrolls, $18.4m from 23 territories. $58.3m cum – 44.4% int; 55.6% US
- (New) Black & White: The Dawn of Justice, $10m from 3 territories. $19m cum – 100% int
- (New) Left Behind, $6.9m from 1 territory – 100% US
• Thanks to Rentrak. All this week’s figures are based on estimates; all historical figures unadjusted, unless otherwise stated.
• What should we be covering in our new global box office column? Let us know in the comments below.
