Sick with sequel fatigue? This weekend at the box office provided no relief, with three sequels topping the charts but delivering mixed performances.

"Tyler Perry's Boo! A Madea Halloween," the director's latest turn in his Madea wig, fared best, with an estimated $27.6 million debut at No. 1 in the U.S. and Canada.

Though its opening was just the third highest of the six movies in the series, it was a definite improvement from the previous installment, "Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas," which opened to $16 million in December 2013.

"Jack Reacher: Never Go Back," starring Tom Cruise as the Lee Child-created investigator who always finds himself in the middle of a massive conspiracy, took second place, grossing a solid—if not mind-blowing—$23 million. "Never Go Back" also outperformed the series' previous installment, an anomaly in today's Hollywood; several sequels have fallen short this year. The original "Jack Reacher" attracted $15 million in its 2012 opening, and went on to collect $80 million.

"Ouija: Origin of Evil" conjured up $14 million in third place, a fine result for a microbudget movie, but still about 30% below the opening of the original "Origin of Evil," about seance scam artists who discover a haunted Ouija board, enjoyed solid critical reviews and faces little competition from other scary movies heading into next week's Halloween weekend. Audiences were more skeptical than critics, giving the movie a "C" grade, according to market- research firm CinemaScore.

The weekend's top two performers were much-needed successes for their studios. Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., which released "Boo!", has weathered disappointing releases in recent months, such as "Deepwater Horizon" and "Blair Witch."

"Boo!" expanded Mr. Perry's core audience, said David Spitz, Lions Gate's co-president of domestic distribution. The director's previous movies attracted audiences that were about 80% to 90% African-American, whereas the opening-weekend crowd for "Boo!" was about 60% black, he said. The broader audience stemmed in part from the casting of social-media "influencers," such as YouTube star Kian Lawley and dancer Lexy Panterra. "Boo!" had a production budget of about $20 million.

Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures needed a win after a bruising year of hardly any hits. The studio's "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back" will lean on Mr. Cruise's overseas star appeal to boost returns. In addition to its North American gross, the movie collected an additional $31 million abroad since opening in 84% of the total box-office marketplace this weekend. The original "Jack Reacher" eventually grossed $138 million from international box offices.

"Never Go Back" had a production budget of $60 million, a relatively modest sum for an action movie, which should help it turn a profit for Paramount. "It's a challenged environment for sequels," said Megan Colligan, Paramount's president of world-wide distribution and marketing. "It's important that you're managing the price of it."

The weekend's other new wide release couldn't count on stars Jon Hamm or Zach Galifianakis to fill seats. Twentieth Century Fox's "Keeping Up with the Joneses," about a suburban couple whose lives become entangled in international espionage, barely registered with moviegoers, taking in just $5.6 million. (Fox's parent company, 21st Century Fox, and News Corp, parent company of The Wall Street Journal, share common ownership.)

In other box-office news, the critically acclaimed "Moonlight" collected a robust $415,000 from just four theaters. That bodes well for the drama about a young closeted black man coming of age in Miami, which will expand in the coming weeks before going nationwide on Nov. 4.

Of all the new releases, audiences liked "Boo!" the best. It received an "A" grade, according to CinemaScore, while "Jack Reacher" got a "B+" and "Joneses" a "B-."

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 23, 2016 21:45 ET (01:45 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Fox (NASDAQ:FOX)
Historical Stock Chart
From Feb 2024 to Mar 2024 Click Here for more Fox Charts.
Fox (NASDAQ:FOX)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2023 to Mar 2024 Click Here for more Fox Charts.