After several delays, Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife finally hit theaters to great fan reaction, scoring $44 million in its opening weekend. The new picture shifts the focus onto Egon Spengler’s grandchildren, Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace), and their friends who suit up as junior, midwestern Ghostbusters.
Via CinemaScore, exiting audiences gave this sequel an A-. It has a great 96% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Critics weren’t so kind. It has a decent but not great 62% on RT. That is below the score of Paul Feig’s 2016 all-female Ghostbusters reboot which has a 74% RT score. Ghostbusters: Afterlife also made less in its opening weekend than Feig’s version, which opened to $46M. On the flip side, that film had far worse audience reactions with a low 49% RT audience score.
While Ghostbusters: Afterlife didn’t have the hugest opening, it is widely believed that Sony released this picture on this weekend with anticipation that audiences would love it and spread the word to their friends AND make this the #1 movie during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. It has a great shot at that, but we’ll have to wait and see if it can pull that off.
Though it wasn’t quite as successful, this weekend’s other big release was Warner Brothers’ King Richard, which is basically awards-bait for Will Smith’s performance as the father of tennis superstars Venus and Serena Williams.
- Ghostbusters: Afterlife (Sony) – $44M
- Eternals (Disney) – $10.8M/Wk 3 Total – $135.8M
- Clifford the Big Red Dog (Paramount) – $8.1M/Wk 2 Total – $33.5M
- King Richard (Warner Brothers) – $5.7M
- Dune (Warner Brothers) – $3M/Wk 5 Total – $98.2M
Yes, Ghostbusters: Afterlife has a good shot at being the #1 movie over the Thanksgiving holiday thanks to great word of mouth. It faces some challenge for family audiences with Disney’s Encanto, but while that movie has gotten excellent early reviews, it simply isn’t generating much buzz.
Speaking of awards-bait, also opening is House of Gucci directed by Ridley Scott, and starring Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Jared Leto, and more.
Check back to see how these pictures do!
