Clayface has a real challenger for #1 as You Can See Everything goes wide

Clayface is the first DC Studios film since Supergirl (which DC would probably like to forget about), and it’s about as different from Supergirl as it could be. It’s a hard-R body horror film about a rising actor who signs up for an experimental procedure after his face is disfigured. Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini wrote it, and James Watkins, whose last film was Speak No Evil, directed. Most importantly, it only cost $44M. Supergirl cost $170M, opened to $37.1M in July and finished at $72.4M domestic, so the bar for this one to look like a win is much, much lower. For what it’s worth, we thought the trailer looked pretty good and is doing something different from the average superhero movie. Reviews actually turned out much better than expected too at 76%, which again really does help for a genre that has been struggling these last few years (unless you are Batman, Spider-Man or Superman).

Tracking was all over the place this week, more than for any wide release in a while, with as low as high teens and as high as low 30s. Thursday’s $3.5M in previews helps settle some of that. It’s level with Other Mommy’s $3.6M, which became a $27.8M opening, and well ahead of Kraven’s $2M, which became an $11M one. If we compare this to other spinoff villain movies: Venom opened to $80.3M, Morbius $39.0M, Madame Web $15.3M and Kraven $11.0M. Clayface doesn’t have Venom’s brand, but it has a cleaner hook than those last two, and the R-rated horror audience has been the most reliable crowd of the year. The risk is that it’s going after the same audience as Other Mommy and Street Fighter, with Halloween still a week away. Overseas it’s tracking $20–25M from 76 markets, for a global start of around $45–55M.

We had predicted this hitting double digits last weekend, expecting maybe $11–12M, which would have been an excellent result. It went above that and hit $15.6M, and it’s only gotten stronger since. It fell just 7% from Saturday to Sunday, then won Monday ($2.58M), nearly won Tuesday ($2.63M), and won Wednesday ($2.60M) and Thursday ($2.2M) - even though Street Fighter opened to double, which shows just how strong it was this week. That’s $25.6M in its first week on a $7M budget, with over 2,000 sellouts on opening weekend and about 70% of the audience under 35.

Now A24 is tripling the theater count. We think that at the very least, it stays even from last weekend, but more likely it cracks $20M, landing somewhere between $20–25M. There are two good comps for documentary-style films that went wide in their second weekend after huge limited openings:

Borat opened to $26.5M from 837 theaters in 2006, then expanded to 2,566 and went up to $28.3M.

Fahrenheit 9/11, still the documentary record holder, opened to $23.9M from 868 theaters and went to 1,725 in its second weekend and did $22M.

You Can See Everything’s opening was smaller than both, but its weekdays are running ahead of anything a documentary has done since. The one thing working against it is the runtime. At 2 hours 54 minutes, a lot of those 2,600 screens will only get three shows a day, so it needs very full rooms to hit $20M+. But more likely is that theaters show it on multiple screens, so that shouldn’t really be an issue here, and we’re already seeing sellouts in major markets. In New York City, for example, it’s proving very difficult to find a ticket at any point, day or night, all weekend long. Whether it merely hits $18–20M VS. $22–25M really depends on whether it resonates with people all across the country, or is limited to the major cities.

Street Fighter opened at #1 with $30.8M, right in the middle of our call, and finished its first week at $38.3M. Monday was weak at $1.9M, but Tuesday bounced back to $2.86M and was the biggest day of any film. Then it lost Wednesday and Thursday to the documentary.

The genre comps all fell hard in their second weekend: Mortal Kombat II dropped 65%, Masters of the Universe 69% and Resident Evil 62%. The B- CinemaScore won’t help. The audience also skewed older than expected (35–44 was the biggest age group, and only 11% of buyers were under 17), and Clayface is going straight for the same crowd. A 65% drop puts it around $10.8M and close to $50M after ten days.

Laika’s first film since Missing Link in 2019 has the best reviews of any wide release this weekend by a mile: 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, 98% from audiences and 87 on Metacritic. It took more than five years to make, and stop-motion is expensive, so it carries a $100M budget.

The problem is that Laika has never opened big. Its openings so far:
The Boxtrolls: $17.3M, its best
Coraline: $16.8M (2009)
ParaNorman: $14.1M
Kubo and the Two Strings: $12.6M
Missing Link: $5.9M, finishing at $16.6M domestic

This one is being distributed by Fathom, which mostly handles event releases. Thursday’s roughly $1M in previews has it hoping for double digits, which would be a good result here. We’d really like to see it get to $15M, but that might end up a touch too high. It’s also 2 hours 19 minutes, which is very long for a family animated film. The good news is that animated films with great reviews tend to hold well, and there’s very little competition for families until The Cat in the Hat on November 6.

This is the one that could quietly surprise, even if Black Bear doesn’t have the best track record at opening films wide to strong results. Olivia Colman plays a fisherwoman in a small village who has the local basketmaker weave her a husband, played by Alexander Skarsgård, and the town doesn’t take it well. Black Bear bought it at Sundance for $2.5M, it’s at 92% on Rotten Tomatoes and 93% with audiences, and 1,471 theaters is a big rollout for a film this size. Normally with a well reviewed smaller film, the rollout starts small to build up word of mouth, so we’ll see if this wide approach plays out for the film.

Thursday’s $620K is right next to The Social Reckoning ($617K → $5M) and Colman’s own The Roses ($606K → $6.2M), and ahead of Conclave ($491K → $6.6M). We think anything north of $4M would be a good result here.