Box Office Results: David Fincher’s Gone Girl Repeats at #1 Over Four New Movies

The ComingSoon.net Box Office Report has been updated with studio estimates for the weekend. Click here for the full box office estimates of the top 12 films and then check back on Monday for the final figures based on actual box office.

Four new movies opened in wide release on Thursday night, but none of them were able to defeat David Fincher’s Gone Girl (20th Century Fox), starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike, as it built on the word-of-mouth from its opening weekend to score a second weekend at #1 with $26.8 million, down just 29% from its opening weekend. So far, it’s grossed $78.3 million in just ten days and is well on its way to becoming one of Fincher’s highest-grossing hits.

The movie that came closest to defeating it was Universal Pictures’ monster prequel Dracula Untold, starring Luke Evans as the titular vampire with co-stars Sarah Gadon, Charles Dance and Dominic Cooper. After grossing $1.3 million in Thursday night previews, the epic directed by first-time filmmaker Gary Shore, won Friday with $8.9 million, ahead of Gone Girl by less than a million. Unlike Gone Girl, it dropped slightly on Saturday so that it ended up with a three-day weekend estimate of $23.4 million in 2,855 theaters, a similar $8,200 theater average as its main competition. Its “A-” CinemaScore isn’t bad for a genre movie that received generally bad reviews. Its worth nothing that this is the second week in a row in which Gone Girl took second place on Friday but won the overall weekend.

Like so many other recent movies, Dracula Untold also played on 351 IMAX screens domestically this weekend which accounted for $4 million of its opening weekend.

After opening in 25 markets last weekend, Dracula Untold added another $33.9 million overseas in its second weekend as it added 17 more markets, opening with $9.6 million in Russia, $9.5 million in Mexico and $4.4 million in Korea, and bringing its international gross to $62.6 million. $2.5 million of its weekend gross came from the 155 IMAX screens it played on for a total international IMAX gross of $4.5 million.

The title may have been a mouthful, but the family comedy Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Disney), based on the popular ’70s children’s book and starring Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner, opened in third place with a solid $19.1 million in 3,088 theaters. It also received an “A-” CinemaScore which should bode well for its family audience, at least through the end of the month of October, which isn’t normally a good time for a family movie.

After a tight race for #1 last weekend, New Line’s horror prequel Annabelle had a much larger second weekend drop-off than Gone Girl, as it dropped 56% to fourth place with $16.4 million and $62.2 million grossed so far.

Pairing one of the highest paid movie stars, Robert Downey Jr., with a well-respected Oscar-winning veteran in Robert Duvall, the David Dobkin-directed dramedy The Judge (Warner Bros.) did just okay with $13.3 million in 3,003 theaters for fifth place. It averaged $4,400 per theater, but it also received an “A-” CinemaScore–obviously, all three movies were cheating off each other when taking their tests–which is a good sign the movie should have decent legs.

Clawing its way to $100 million, and still too early to tell if it will make it, Denzel Washington and Training Day director Antoine Fuqua’s reunion for The Equalizer (Sony) added another $9.7 million this weekend (down 48%) to bring its domestic gross to $79.9 million.

Seventh place went to the fourth new wide release, Addicted (Lionsgate), adapted from the bestselling erotic thriller by Zane and starring Sharon Leal, which opened moderately in 846 theaters but scored a strong $10 thousand per-theater average to take seventh place with $7.6 million.

It came out just ahead of the movie based on James Dashner’s science fiction novel The Maze Runner (20th Century Fox), which added another $7.5 million for eighth place as it has now grossed $83.8 million domestically.

LAIKA Studio’s stop-motion animated The Boxtrolls (Focus Features) had to settle for ninth place with $6.7 million, down 44% from last week as it ended its Top 10 run with $41 million.

10th place seems to be undetermined at this point but its between two spiritual movies as Blair True’s documentary Meet the Mormons (Purdie Distribution) opened in just 317 theaters but grossed $2.4 million in its first few days, an impressive average of $7,600 per site. Unfortunately, the distributor wasn’t able to determine a Sunday estimate, since apparently, the movie’s primary audience of Mormons doesn’t go to the movies on Sunday. That basically allowed another spiritually-based film, Nicolas Cage’s Left Behind, based on the bestsellers by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, to remain in the Top 10 (at least for now) with $2.9 million, despite having dropped 54% of its opening business.

The Top 10 movies grossed approximately $135 million over the weekend, up over $30 million from last year when Tom Hanks’ Captain Phillips opened in second place with $25.7 million to Alfonso Cuaron’s unstoppable Gravity, which was #1 again with $43.2 million.

James Gunn’s outer-space epic Guardians of the Galaxy (Marvel Studios/Disney) may have finally dropped out of the Top 10, but it also finally opened in China where it set a new October opening record with $26.6 million. That was Disney’s third-highest opening in the country after Iron Man 3 ($64.5 million) and Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($38.8 million). That brings the movie’s global gross to $687 million with $361 million overseas and $326 million domestically.

Not quite in wide release, the Jeremy Renner political thriller Kill the Messenger (Focus Features), co-starring Rosemarie DeWitt, Mary Elisabeth Winstead, Andy Garcia and more, opened in 374 theaters Friday and brought in a disappointing $939 thousand or about $2,500 per theater.

Doing even worse was the Weinstein Company’s One Chance, starring James Corden as “Britain’s Got Talent” winner Paul Potts, which was finally released in 43 theaters since being delayed from earlier this year. Its $32 thousand take for the weekend, or $763 per location, proved that delaying the movie may have been a mistake.

Starring Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy and Naomi Watts, Theodore Melfi’s comedy St. Vincent (The Weinstein Co.) brought in $121 thousand in 4 theaters in New York and L.A., boasting the best per-theater average of the weekend with about $30 thousand per location. The comedy is expected to expand nationwide on October 24.

Damien Chazelle’s highly-feted and award-winning Whiplash (Sony Pictures Classics), starring Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons, opened in six locations to the tune of $143 thousand or about $24 thousand per theater.

Click here for the full box office estimates of the top 12 films.