Weekend Box Office: 'Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice' Opens To Boffo $110 Million
The Tim Burton-directed and Michael Keaton/Winona Ryder/Jenna Ortega-starring sequel began its global theatrical run with a promising $145.5 million global debut.
The kids (and their nostalgic parents) showed up to those Saturday and Sunday matinees, pushing the estimated opening weekend total for Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice to $110 million. 33% came from PLF screens. That includes $41.8 million on Saturday, essentially tied with the $41.5 million Friday gross (+45% if you remove the pre-release previews) and gives the Warner Bros. Discovery flick a promising 2.65x weekend multiplier. It’s the third-best opening of the year behind Inside Out 2 ($155 million) and Deadpool & Wolverine ($211 million), as well as WBD’s third-biggest “not Harry Potter or DC Comics” launch behind It ($123 million) and Barbie ($162 million). It’s the second-biggest opening ever for September (behind It) and bigger than any October launch (sorry to Taylor Swift and Arthur Fleck).
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, with reprising stars Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara joining franchise newbies Jenna Ortega, Monica Bellucci and Willem Dafoe, nabbed a halfway decent B+ from CinemaScore. More encouragingly, audiences under 25 (24% of the weekend audience) gave it an A- and women under 25 (15% of the audience) gave it an A. It earned a 4/5 from PostTrak, with parents giving it a 5/5 (remember when Burton movies traumatized mothers and fathers?) and kids giving it 4.5/5. If you’ve got the kids, then the nostalgia nerds barely matter, something to remember when WBD’s Jared Hess-directed, Jack Black-starring A Minecraft Movie opens next April. The $100 million budgeted comic fantasy played 52% Caucasian, 31% Hispanic, 10% Black, 3% Asian and 4% Native American or “other.”
Beetlejuice 2 is a multigenerational, multi-property nostalgic event. Folks of all ages “discovered” Beetlejuice at some point in the last 36 years via the 1988 movie, the early 1990s animated series or the recent musical stage show. Tim Burton has been a marquee filmmaker for almost 40 years, with multiple generations “discovering” him via his earlier work (Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure through Sleepy Hollow) or his later offerings like Alice in Wonderland in 2010 and Netflix’s Wednesday in 2022, which introduced him to a new generation of younger fans. That show also turned Jenna Ortega into a youth-skewing added value element. Throw in Winona Ryder’s then (Heathers, Edward Scissorhands, etc.) and now (Stranger Things) added-value popularity (ditto Home Alone and Schmidt’s Creek star Catherine O’Hara), and it was “showtime.”
With a 77% “fresh” from Rotten Tomatoes and 62% on Metacritic (with a shockingly high 3.4/5 user score from Letterboxd), this should be the opposite of a one-weekend wonder. Even with two “big” animated films (Transformers One on September 20 and The Wild Robot on September 27), this should remain the all-quadrant event film of the moment for the foreseeable future. I mean, unless the months and months of Clockwork Orange-style force-feeding of the Speak No Evil trailers before every single fucking theatrical movie turns that into a tentpole-sized event next weekend, but I jest. Outside of straight-up animated films and Terrifier 3, there’s nothing aimed at families between now and Venom: The Last Dance on October 25 and then nothing until Wicked Part One on November 15.
Legs akin to It Chapter Two ($211 million from an $89 million launch) get it to $260 million domestically, while legs like It Chapter One ($327 million/$123 million) get it to $292 million. I can’t imagine WBD won’t push it to $300 million if it gets close enough, especially with weaker overseas figures ($35.4 million in 75% of the overseas marketplace. This could be like Twisters ($265 million domestically but $100 million overseas), where it’s a domestic-skewing IP with little overseas appeal. WBD isn’t splitting the budget and the money pot with Universal, and this is still a $100 million budgeted flick that should at least crawl to $400 million worldwide. Even if it’s another “huge domestic but soft overseas” 2024 release, at least it’s budgeted for that eventuality.
I think it may leg out better in Europe than Twisters, simply because of the softer competition, now that the summer biggies are further along in their run.
Just for shits and giggles, this is also one of three Warner Bros. movies to open over $100M that is not from either DC or the Harry Potter universe. So, I guess this is another great example of WB being a whole lot more than just Batman and Harry Potter. We'll see if A Minecraft Movie (despite the trailer not leaving a good first impression at all) can continue that narrative.
Also, just a little correction, Barbie opened to $162M, not $169M. I think you're getting it mixed up with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II, which opened to the latter number.