By I promise that I’m not going to make a possession joke. That would be too easy in trying to explain why fans went and saw The Exorcist: Believer this weekend. Despite some largely negative word of mouth (and a pretty dire review from Flixist’s own Jesse Lab), viewers turned out to see the legasequel in droves. The start of this new trilogy of Exorcist films debuted with $27.2 million in domestic revenue with an additional $17.8 internationally. This was below expectations, but still pretty close to the film’s reported $30 million budget.
It seems The Exorcist couldn’t completely stamp out its horror contemporaries at the box office. Saw X, A Haunting in Venice, and The Nun II still pulled solid numbers, landing in third, sixth, and seventh respectively. A re-release of Hocus Pocus in limited theaters even managed to break the top 10, which is kind of ludicrous.
Second place wound up going to Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie with $11.7 million, which has somehow become fairly successful. Weirdo sci-fi movie The Creator took fourth with an additional $6 million, but it’s far from being successful. Disney cannot be happy with releasing multiple duds in a single year. Speaking of bombs, Dumb Money brought in an extra $2.1 million but is nowhere near matching its $30 million budget. 2023 has been rough.
Here are the top 10 films for the weekend of October 6-8, 2023. All totals are domestic:
- The Exorcist: Believer – $27.2 million
- Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie – $11.7 million
- Saw X – $8.1 million
- The Creator – $6 million
- The Blind – $3.9 million
- A Haunting in Venice – $2.7 million
- The Nun II – $2.5 million
- Dumb Money – $2.1 million
- The Equalizer 3 – $1.8 million
- Hocus Pocus – $1.5 million
