Entering the golden autumn of October, the North American film market has regained some vitality. Last weekend, three new films were released to the public. In the end, "PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie", a young animated film produced by Paramount, opened with a box office of US$23 million after being released in 3,644 theaters. , becoming the weekend box office champion.
"Paw Paw The Movie 2" is adapted from the popular children's TV show and is also the sequel to "Paw Paw The Movie" released in 2021. The latter still won the award under the hybrid distribution model of the simultaneous launch of the streaming media platform Paramount+ the year before. It had an opening box office of US$13 million, a total box office of US$40 million in North America, and a global box office of US$144 million. This is a pretty good commercial result for an animated film with a production budget of US$26 million.
And, in addition to box office revenue, the film's release also gave a major boost to sales of "Paw Patrol" spin-offs, and its developer, Canada's Spin Master, has grown to With sales of up to 14 billion US dollars in "Paw Paw Team" related products, its popularity is evident.
A still from "The Paw Paw Team Makes Great Differences Movie 2". The film was released in mainland China on September 29. Among the seven National Day animated films this year, it currently ranks first at the box office.
The production cost of "Paw Paw Team Movie 2" this time was only US$30 million, and it is believed that a lot of it was paid to Internet celebrity Kim Kardashian and her two children who participated in the dubbing. The film tells the story of the puppies of the Paw Team trying to save the world after a meteor crashes into Adventure City.
The Chinese mainland market has also screened the film simultaneously with North America. The cumulative box office has now exceeded 46 million yuan. I believe it will make good gains during the long holiday. However, regardless of the final box office results, the filming plan for the third part has been approved and is expected to be released to small audiences in 2026.
In second place on the weekend box office list was the originally promising horror film "Saw X" produced by Lionsgate Pictures. The film was released in 3,262 theaters and earned an opening box office of US$18 million, while its production cost was less than US$13 million. It is the sequel to "Saw" released in 2004. The biggest highlight is naturally that the role of the murderous "Jigsaw" played by Tobin Bell has become heavy again.
The character "Jigsaw" began to appear in the first part in 2004, and died on the spot at the end of the third part of the series. After that, although he appeared in the sequels in various flashbacks and prequels, his importance gradually became less important. By 2021 In the ninth part of the year, he completely quit and only made a brief appearance in the form of photos. This time, director Kevin Greutert (Kevin Greutert), who has directed the sixth and seventh installments of the series before, undoubtedly wants to revitalize this villain, thus giving the director who has found it difficult to make new movies The story of "Chainsaw" (the box office data of the previous film has reached the lowest point in the series, with a box office of only 23 million US dollars in North America and a global box office of 41 million US dollars), injects hope of recovery.
"Saw 10" stills
On the film review website "Rotten Tomatoes", "Saw 10" currently has a freshness rating of 85%, making it the best-rated film in the entire series and the only one with a rating higher than the passing line of 60%. As for the box office, "Saw 3" released in 2006 ranked first in the series with an opening box office of US$33 million. The opening box office of "Saw 10" is US$18 million, which is still far behind. It also reflects the inevitable loss of creativity and aesthetic fatigue of the series of movies.
Of course, this series is not expensive to shoot, and although the returns may be high or low, losing money is rarely possible. Therefore, in the nearly 20 years since its birth, it has been a money-attracting tool for Lionsgate Pictures. The total global box office of the previous 9 films has exceeded 1 billion US dollars, while the total production cost is only more than 100 million US dollars.
Compared with the above two IP works, the purely original science fiction film "The Creator" only received US$14 million at the box office after being released in 3,680 theaters over the weekend; compared with its production cost of US$80 million, I'm afraid it will end up being a box office failure.
"AI Creator" poster
"AI Creator" stars John David Washington, Gemma Chan, Allison Janney, Ken Watanabe, etc., and is directed by the director of "Godzilla" and "A Star Wars Story: Rogue One" Written and directed by British Gareth Edwards. The film is set in a future United States that has become a wasteland after a nuclear war. The theme is the life-and-death struggle between AI and humans. The film also has a 68% freshness rating on "Rotten Tomatoes". It cannot be said to be a bad film, but it can only be said to lack novelty and completion. Such box office results are a big blow to Hollywood's original films, whose current situation is not optimistic.
In addition, the topical film "Dumb Money", which has been in theaters for three weeks, expanded its screening scale to 2,837 theaters last weekend, and its box office performance was also weaker than expected. It only earned a meager US$3.5 million, and its performance was not as good as that of "The Nun" which has been in theaters for a long time. 2" and other films can only rank seventh on the weekend box office list.
"Stupid Money" poster
"Stupid Money" is adapted from a true story and tells the story of the short-selling incident that occurred in the U.S. stock market in 2021. Since its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in Canada on September 8, it has received quite good media reviews and is currently in " It still has an 84% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Moreover, Sony Pictures has specially arranged a gradual release model for the film from point to point. The screening scale will gradually be expanded from a small number of theaters on September 15. Taking into account that the actors' union strike has made the cast team of "Stupid Money" unable to Participate in publicity, so we can only rely on word of mouth from the audience, hoping to expand the influence of the film on social networks and society.
However, the good reputation failed to translate into high box office. The situations of "Stupid Money" and "AI Creator" still seem to illustrate that in today's North American film market, there is a lack of appealing IP. No matter how good the film itself is, it may be difficult to attract enough audiences. Buy a ticket to get in.
Of course, this rule is not without exception. The summer release of "Oppenheimer" is proof of this. Logically speaking, there is no big IP behind the film. It relies purely on the director's appeal and the appeal of the work itself. Currently, two and a half months after its release, the global box office has Reaching an astonishing US$926 million (of which US$181 million came from IMAX theaters), it became the third highest-grossing movie in the world this year after "Barbie" and "Super Mario Bros. Movie", far surpassing "Guardians of the Galaxy" Team 3" (USD 845 million), "Fast and Furious 10" (USD 704 million) and "Mission: Impossible 7" (USD 576 million) and other major IP series movies.
Currently, "Oppenheimer" is the second-highest-grossing restricted film in history, second only to "Joker" released in 2019 ($1.07 billion). With an investment of around $100 million, Universal Pictures is sure to make a killing, and Nolan himself should get tens of millions of dollars in box office share. In the past, his "The Dark Knight" (USD 1 billion) and "The Dark Knight Rises" (USD 1.08 billion) also reached the milestone of exceeding 1 billion US dollars in global box office, but in comparison, "Old Man" "Benheimer" does not have IP blessing, and it is a biographical film adaptation with a relatively small market. Not many people originally expected it to achieve such commercial success.
