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We knew IT would be good, but we didn’t realise IT would be huge. Despite the looming shadow of Hurricane Irma sweeping through South-East America, Andy Muschietti’s adaptation of Stephen King’s beloved novel grossed a record breaking $117m at the US box-office, with some outlets predicting it could creep over the $120m when the final tally is announced.
Like Pennywise the Dancing Clown, IT has consumed all before it. The Warner Bros. and New Line film has broken the following records; the largest September opening (beating Hotel Transylvania 2’s $48.5 million), largest autumn opening (Gravity with $55.7 million), the largest opening for an 18-rated horror film (besting Paranormal Activity 3’s $52.5 million), scratch that, the largest horror opening regardless of the age-rating. It was only denied the largest R-rated movie opening ever by Deadpool’s $132.4m gross from last February.
In second place was the Reese Witherspoon vehicle, Home Again, which managed to take $9m, a whopping $110m behind IT, and the fifth largest gap between first and second place at the box-office.
Overseas, IT scared up $62 million for a $179 million global bow. These numbers include the largest opening weekend for a horror film in the U.K. ($12.3m), Russia ($6.7m), Australia ($5.9m), Brazil ($5.6m), Netherlands ($1.4m) and Poland ($1.15m).
The Hitman’s Bodyguard continued to hang around, taking its domestic tally to $65m with a third placed finish of $4.85m. In fourth place, dropping an impressive 47% considering the competition from IT, was Annabelle: Creation, which took its total to $96.2m and will become the only film from that wretched month of August to cross the $100m mark at the box-office.
Spider-man: Homecoming hung around in the Top 10 for another week, with a running cume of $327.7m, but is worth mentioning because it opened in China this weekend with $70.8m, pushing its worldwide gross up to $823m, the second highest earning webslinger outing after Spider-Man 3.
Next week should still belong to the Loser’s Club, but how much of a dent Darren Aronofsky/Jennifer Lawrence mind melter, mother! (read our review here) will be, could be an interesting watch.
Until then you can find the full run down of statistics over at Boxofficemojo.
Image: Warner Bros.
