'Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice' Marks Tim Burton's Fifth Decade Of Boffo Box Office

A $41.5 million Friday continues a 35-year run of precedent-shattering opening weekends from the guy who directed 'Batman' and 'Alice in Wonderland'

Warner Bros. Discovery’s Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice topped the domestic box office on Friday with a $41.5 million opening day. That includes $13 million in Wednesday/Thursday preview grosses, giving it a $28.5 million “pure Friday.” Conversely, 14.5 years ago, Alice in Wonderland earned $40.8 million on its opening Friday, including just $3.9 million in midnight showings. Yes, the “see it soon and see it first” mentality has increased since 2010, when a $7.5 million midnight gross meant a $128 million opening weekend for Iron Man 2.

Hell, once upon a time, Batman shattered box office records with a $13 million Friday and $43 million opening weekend. That was 35 years ago this past June. Batman and Batman Returns broke the opening weekend record with a $43 million launch in 1989 and a $47 million debut in 1992. Since then, Burton has been continuing to knock it out of the park on an almost generational basis.

Unto every generation…

Sleepy Hollow saved his career in 1999 with a $30 million launch, the tenth biggest R-rated launch ever behind Air Force One ($37 million in 1997), Interview with the Vampire ($36 million in 1994), Ransom ($34 million), Lethal Weapon 4 ($34 million in 1998), Lethal Weapon 3 ($33 million in 1992), Scream 2 ($33 million in 1997), Terminator 2 ($32 million in 1991), Saving Private Ryan ($31 million in 1998) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula ($30 million in 1992). Two years later, his “reimagining” of Planet of the Apes (essentially the first modern reboot) nabbed the second-biggest opening weekend (behind The Lost World: Jurassic Park, which had earned $74 million over the Fri-Sun portion of a $92 million Memorial Day weekend launch) with a $69 million Fri-Sun debut.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory defied the skeptics in 2005 (with the media weirdly obsessing on whether Johnny Depp’s Wonka was a kid-unfriendly Michael Jackson riff) via a $56 million launch toward an eventual $475 million global cume. While well below the $108-$114 million likes of Revenge of the Sith, Shrek 2 and Spider-Man, it was the fifth biggest July launch behind Spider-Man 2 ($88 million), Austin Powers: Goldmember ($73 million), Planet of the Apes ($68 million) and War of the Worlds ($64 million).

It was the fifth-biggest opening for a live-action PG flick behind Phantom Menace ($64 million over a $105 million Wed-Sun debut in 1999), Attack of the Clones ($80 million over a $110 million Thurs-Sun opening in 2002) and the first three Harry Potter films ($90 million in 2001, $88 million in 2002 and $93 million in 2004). It’s still 19th behind Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer ($57 million in 2007), The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe ($67 million in late 2005), Sonic the Hedgehog 2 ($72 million in 2022), four Harry Potter flicks (including Half-Blood Prince nabbing $70 million over a $140 million Wed-Sun launch in 2009), two Star Wars prequels and eight “Disney live-action remakes” (from Cinderella with $67 million to The Lion King with $191 million).

Oh, right, the sub-genre that Burton more-or-less invented… Alice in Wonderland opened in March of 2010, four months after James Cameron’s Avatar temporarily made 3-D into a genuine “added value element” for already viable tentpoles. This was also when a studio spending $200 million on an action/fantasy IP flick that A) opened outside of summer and B) focused on a girl or a woman were still big deals. Along with the “added value element” cast (including Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway and Alan Rickman), it also arrived at a critical point for Burton.

The generation that grew up on Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas were now old enough to have their own kids who might delight in a “kid-friendly scary” Disney-distributed fantasy epic. Cue a $116 million opening weekend, the sixth-biggest ever (behind The Dark Knight with $167 million, Spider-Man 3 with $159 million, The Twilight Saga: New Moon with $142 million, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest with $135 million and Shrek the Third with $123 million), the second-biggest non-summer launch (behind New Moon just 3.5 months earlier) and tops for a non-sequel.