The box office was a case of ’80s counter-programming this weekend, catering to the decade’s Deadites and duck-hunters, which saw The Super Mario Bros. Movie continue to collect coin for the third weekend in a row, and an impressive debut for horror-sequel Evil Dead Rise.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie leaped and bounded its way to a whopping $58.23 million in its third weekend of release, taking its domestic total to $434.33 million and $871 million globally. Already the biggest grossing film of 2023, industry experts predict the Illumination and Nintendo blockbuster to pass the billion dollar mark sometime this week.
At the opposite end of the spectrum Warner Bros. and New Line resurrected Sam Raimi’s Deadites with Evil Dead Rise, the fifth installment in the iconic horror franchise, but the first since 2013’s lucrative reboot. Originally intended to debut on HBO Max, the $15 million production earned a solid $23.5 million at the North American box-office, and managed to summon a further $16.8 million from international audiences, for a worldwide bow of $40.3 million.
Unable to emerge from the box-office battlefield unscathed was Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, which despite superb reviews (read our ★★★★ take here), landed at number three in the chart with a disappointing $6.28 million from 2,611 cinemas. Similarly, Ari Aster’s $35 million budgeted existential-epic Beau Is Afraid couldn’t capitalise on a year’s best limited release, scraping into ninth place during its moderate expansion (read our review here).
All of the dollars and decimal places can be found over at BoxOfficeMojo, and don’t forget to let us know where your ticket money went this weekend by heading to our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
