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Ghostbusters: Afterlife Crushes Box Office Expectations by Nearly 50%
Sony had a very good weekend at the box office where Ghostbusters: Afterlife sits at the top with a $44M opening weekend. The Jason Reitman led film did so-so with critics, scoring 62% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, but the audience score is at 96% meaning ticket buyers are all in on the franchise relaunch. As Deadline notes, the film pulled in $2M short of the Paul Feig directed 2016 Ghostbusters, that was well before the pandemic, and the critics were swooning about that abomination. The new Ghostbusters film is likely to have a VERY good week with a lot of kids out of school due to the Thanksgiving holiday.
Recently dubbed Sexiest Man Alive, Paul Rudd in the cast probably didn’t hurt either.
On the other hand, the other wide release of the weekend, King Richard, isn’t fairing nearly as well with just $5.7M. The Will Smith lead story of Serena and Venus Williams was released simultaneously on HBO Max, which continues to hurt the box office of all the Warner Bros films that have being doing the day-and-date release plan. Rounding out the weekend, Eternals hung on to the second spot with another $10.8M taking it to $135.8M domestically and $336M worldwide. Clifford the Big Red Dog dug up $8.1M and Dune hangs on to the fifth spot with $3.1M taking the domestic total to $98M but worldwide it’s doing better at $367M showing what the film might have done in the States had it not had a day-and-date release.
Clownfish TV looks back at all the bad press the movie got and the low expectations most film media had for its box office potential.
The takeaway this weekend should be that studios would do well to give the fans what they want. The media has slime on their face, and should be embarrassed. Ghostbusters: Afterlife has breathed new life into the franchise’s ’80s fantasy fun and delivered the goods in the spirit of the classic original by balancing the spooky and the kooky.
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