This weekend, American audiences wanted to be chilled in more ways than one and they didn’t really care about Nicolas Cage’s immortal soul. Gone Girl, the latest thriller from David Fincher, opened to a healthy $38 million Stateside according to studio estimates, giving the director his best domestic opening of all time.
It had been a close run thing with Conjuring spin-off Annabelle for most of the weekend, and indeed the horror film was only barely pipped to the post, with John Leonetti’s scary doll tale pulling in $37.2 million for its first three days. Given that both the top two films were rated R across the pond, that’s a successful weekend for more adult orientated filmmaking.
Last week’s also-grown-up top dog,** The Equalizer**, was forced down to third, but slipped just 44% for $19 million and a $64.5 million take in the States to date. **The Boxtrolls **fell one place to fourth with $12.4 million – helping its animation studio Laika to secure a new, three-film deal with Focus Features – while **The Maze Runner **appeared to show some fatigue in its third week as the main target audience burned away slightly, leaving it fifth with $12 million. Still, with more than $175 million in the bank globally, the franchise is off to a sprinting start.
That’s a far better performance than Nicolas Cage’s latest, Left Behind. The attempt to reboot the faith-based rapture franchise based on the best-selling book series was greeted with vitriolic reviews and the cold shoulder from audiences, taking in just $6.8 million for a sixth place launch. It seems unlikely that this series will be moving forward, but stranger things have happened (see the increasingly unsuccessful but apparently immortal Atlas Shrugged niche efforts).
This Is Where I Leave You fell to seventh, taking in $4 million, while Dolphin Tale 2 sank to eighth with $3.5 million. Guardians Of The Galaxy, nearly ready to head out of the charts, still managed to grab $3 million after 10 weeks on release, boosting its US total to $323 million and its worldwide haul to more than $653 million. And in 10th, home invasion thriller No Good Deed made $2.5 million, for a $50.1 million US total so far.
To see Rosamund Pike smash a creepy doll in the full chart listings, head to Box Office Mojo.