Pray for Poitrot: The Nun II squeaks past A Haunting In Venice in tight box office race

As our beloved Mr. Autumn Man prepares to pull his gray sweater and plaid shirt from his vintage steamer trunk, horror movies and who-dun-its posing as such begin to fill up the box office top 10. The latest entry in the Conjuringiverse, The Nun II, and Kenneth Branagh’s new mustache-twirling Poirot adventure, A Haunting In Venice, each brought in roughly $14.5 million this weekend. However, the most current estimates on Box Office Mojo and The Numbers put The Nun II slightly ahead with $14.7 million to Venice’s $14.5 million.

A post-summer slowdown is typical for the box office, especially considering the surprisingly lively past few months. However, some medium-priced movies prove that maybe spending $300 million on a Flash isn’t the quickest way to profit. Working off a reported $70 million budget Equalizer 3 pulled in another $7 million this weekend and brought its three-week domestic total to $73 million. Meanwhile, Focus Feature’s My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 added another $4 million to its two-week domestic gross of $18 million. While Barbie closed out the top five and shoveled another $3 million onto its $629 million domestic haul, the Hindi action thriller Jawan made $2.4 million in less than a thousand theaters. Jawan has currently made $12 million domestically.

Led by Barbie and Oppenheimer, summer holdovers, including Blue Beetle, Ninja Turtles, and Gran Turismo: Based On A True Story, litter the top 10. But the “Barbenheimer” double feature remains the biggest box office story of the year. Greta Gerwig’s pink phenomenon is now the 11th highest-grossing domestic release, with a worldwide total of $1.4 billion, making it the highest-grossing movie based on a toy and the highest-grossing comedy ever. Adding to this summer’s theme of proving conventional box office wisdom of the last decade wrong, Christopher Nolan’s three-hour movie about science conversations brought its worldwide total to $912 million. Oppenheimer is now the highest-grossing biopic in history and will likely cross the billion-dollar mark in the next few weeks.

Here’s the top 10 (per Box Office Mojo):

• The Nun II
• A Haunting In Venice
• The Equalizer 3
• My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3
• Barbie
• Jawan
• Blue Beetle
• Gran Turismo: Based On A True Story
• Oppenheimer
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem