Proof of the continued appeal of movies you could maybe take your kids to or whatever, this one’s got Adam Sandler and Kevin James in it: Hotel Transylvania 2 made a whopping $47.5 million this weekend, setting a record for the biggest non-inflation-adjusted September opening. (Of course, the reason for the movie’s success could be audience’s continued goodwill toward Dexter’s Laboratory and Star Wars: Clone Wars creator Genndy Tartakovsky, though probably not.)
The movie’s take—the kind of thing Variety would describe as “boffo”—should have eclipsed nearly everything else opening this week. However, it still left room for Nancy Meyers’ The Intern—a fellow member of the vaunted A.V. C+ Club, Jesse Hassenger Division—to make a pretty impressive $18.2 million. The only other new release in the Top 10 this week was Eli Roth’s long-delayed The Green Inferno, which squeezed a modest $3.5 million out of a big, 1,500+ theater opening.
Meanwhile, one of The A.V. Club’s favorite movies of the year, Sicario, landed in the 10th spot, despite playing in less than 60 theaters. Denis Villeneuve’s intense cartel thriller is being rolled out slowly, and made an average of $30,000 this weekend—which, for the record, is a lot. Mississippi Grind and 99 Homes also had healthy super-limited openings this week, averaging around $15,000 a theater, and will expand further in the coming weeks. (In regard to the former, we highly recommend checking out Sam Fragoso’s interview with Ben Mendelsohn, one of the movie’s stars and one of our favorites of the recent crop of ascending character actors.)
The big industry story, however, somehow continues to be the failure of Stonewall, Roland Emmerich’s take on the early years of the LGBT rights movement—a movie that’s definitely not good, though not as bad as a lot of people say. Following a trailer campaign and a media blitz that seemed dead-set on alienating anyone and everyone who might be interested in seeing the movie, Stonewall opened to a paltry $112,414, averaging just $871 a theater. Expect several dozen Lost Causers to be mightily confused at gas station Redboxes in the months to come.
For more detailed numbers, visit Box Office Mojo.