Paramount and Legendary’s Street Fighter is topping the domestic chart with an estimated $31 million weekend after a $12.5 million opening day that included $4 million from Thursday previews. That is a decent start for the $82 million Capcom adaptation, but it lands below the $38.5 million opening of Mortal Kombat II in May. A B- CinemaScore — the same audience grade given to the 1994 Street Fighter — points to a frontloaded run rather than long legs.
A24’s three-year secret becomes the real story
You Can See Everything is the weekend’s breakout. The Lance Oppenheim and Nathan Fielder documentary earned $5.5 million on Friday from only 855 screens and is pacing toward a $12.5 million opening. That puts it above 20th Century Studios’ Whalefall, which is opening to about $7 million from 3,065 locations.
- It tops the $7.1 million launch of Amazon MGM’s Melania, which had roughly twice the screens.
- Excluding concert films, it is the biggest documentary opening since Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004.
- More than 1,300 screenings have sold out, and A24 has not yet detailed expansion plans.
The demand signal is unusually strong. The film has 100% critics and 98% audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes, and PostTrak reports a 92% definite recommend mark, well above the 81% for The Odyssey this summer. A24 is on pace to pass the $22.8 million domestic total of Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, which would make it the highest-grossing documentary of the past decade.
The chart behind the headline
Universal/Blumhouse-Atomic Monster’s Other Mommy fell 72% in its second weekend to $7.8 million, but a $44 million 10-day domestic cume against a $19 million budget should still keep it profitable.
Whalefall landed in fourth with about $7 million. Against a $60 million budget, it joins Digger and The Social Reckoning as one of October’s underperformers despite a B CinemaScore and an 82% audience score.
Focus Features’ Sense & Sensibility completed the top five with a $6.7 million opening on 2,545 screens. An A- CinemaScore and an 88% audience score, driven by a largely female audience, should help it hold through awards season.
For planners and distributors, the split is instructive: franchise IP can buy a No. 1 frame but mid-range scores burn demand quickly, while a high-approval niche title can out-earn a wide competitor on a fraction of the screens. The expansion decision, not the opening, is the number to watch.
Source: TheWrap
