Spectre Opening Takings Fail To Match Skyfall

Spectre has shot to the top of the United States box office but failed to match the success of the previous Bond film Skyfall.

Spectre is the second-biggest Bond opening behind 2012’s Skyfall, which took $88.4 million.

“Spectre” also went up against some stiff competition at the box office and from one of the few franchises that’s even older than Bond.

Distributor Sony, which co-produced the film with Eon Productions and MGM, tried to manage expectations going into the weekend, predicting an opening in the US$60-million range.

“Initially no one can live up to Bond”, Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Rentrak, told Variety.

Spectre, the latest offering from the James Bond franchise has emerged as the second highest opener at the box-office of all its instalments so far, according to Forbes magazine and trade data reported by the global press.

Worldwide, Spectre has grossed £200 million.

But the movie more than made up its ground internationally, as the spy flick earned $117.8 million from 76 markets, bringing its foreign total to $190.8 million and taking its worldwide total north of $300 million. The film cost around US$100 million to make.

The 3-D computer animated Peanuts marked a strong return for the beloved comic strip characters, who hadn’t appeared on the big screen since Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown underperformed in 1980. This comment has received varied responses, with many news sites writing about it. Lists of possible actors that could be Bond also showed up.

Holdover “The Martian” still performed well in its sixth weekend, earning another $9.3 million from 2855 theaters for a domestic total of $197 million.

On the specialty field workplace, a trio of recent films made their debuts in restricted launch, with Highlight, the drama concerning the Boston Globe’s exposé on intercourse abuse within the Catholic Church, performing the very best, incomes $302,276 in 5 theaters, for a per-theater common of greater than $60,000. Trumbo, starring Bryan Cranston, took in US$77,229 from five cinemas. If Spectre continues to pull in outsize box office returns, however, Agent 007 should have no problem finding a new home. “There’s been so much turgid, meta-talk in Craig’s films about Bond’s obsolescence; watching Spectre was the first time I actually started to agree with the idea”. And good news for Hollywood following a string of big DOA’s.