Late summer/early fall belongs to older men. That holds up as Denzel Washington arrives with The Equalizer 3. Over the four-day weekend, this threequel looks to rake in $42 million, the second-best Labor Day Weekend opening behind Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which made an astounding $94.6M in 2021.
This is a crowd-pleaser. The Equalizer 3 scored an A CinemaScore, better than The Equalizer 2‘s A-. Its PostTrak is 90% positive, and its Rotten Tomatoes audience score is 94%. Critics were slightly less favorable with a 74% Tomatometer score. On the plus side, most reviews state that if you’ve never seen an Equalizer movie, you can still check this one out and enjoy it regardless.
Labor Day Weekend isn’t the busiest time for cinemas as a lot of people are busy with outdoor activities, so there wasn’t a lot of movement in the rest of the charts. What’s kind of disheartening is that Gran Turismo plunged about 80% to fall at #4 with $8.5M despite great audience reactions upon its opening last weekend.
The rest of the Top Ten consists of Barbie at #2, Blue Beetle at #3, and Oppenheimer at #5.
Though it never even made it into the Top Five in the U.S. and Canada, A24’s Talk to Me has become that studio’s highest-grossing genre flick, beating Hereditary‘s $44M.
Here is the Top Five:
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- The Equalizer 3 (Sony) – 3-day $34.6M/ 4-day $42.25M/ Wk 1
- Barbie (Warner Bros.) – 3-day $10.2M/ 4-day $13.1M/ Total $612M/ Wk 7
- Blue Beetle (Warner Bros.) – 3-Day $7.1M/ 4-day $9.2M/ Total $58.5M/Wk 3
- Gran Turismo (Sony) – 3-day $6.57M/ 4-day $8.56M/ Total $30.6M/ Wk 2
- Oppenheimer (Universal) – 3-day $5.67M/ 4-day $7.5M/ Total $310.5M/Wk 7
Opening next weekend are My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 and The Nun 2. Once again, some of the movies that studios crammed into the summer might have thrived in this slower period. Then again, with schools back in session, maybe not.
Will you be checking anything out at the cinema soon?
