It - 17.5
American Assassin - 6
Mother! - 4.2

I told y'all JLaw is not a draw. Hell, JLo was more of a draw than she is.

Not that it would have helped much, but most theaters only put it on one screen and, in my case, some of the moderate size auditoriums.

That's kinda solid for AA

It also doesn't help that they didn't start advertising the film until a month ago and released it the week after the biggest horror film of all time.

Without the star power, mother! probably would have made less.

Mother is extremely anti mainstream. I'm shocked it's doing this well.

The latter definitely hurt, but I don't think the former was really an issue. 10 Cloverfield Lane's existence was unknown until two months before it opened, and it opened quite well. And the marketing for this was pretty fierce. I think the biggest issue (in addition to being completely overshadowed by It) is that so much of the buzz the last few days has been "this movie is fucking weird and not in a good way," so I imagine that's been scaring off more casual moviegoers, and actual WOM is probably not gonna help matters.

http://deadline.com/2017/09/it-stephen- ... an-obrien- american-assassin-weekend-box-office-1202170367/

Wow, an 8 Million OW for mother! is terrible. That's really too bad. Kudos to Paramount for taking a chance on this and having the balls to release it wide. Wish it would have paid off. Never should have been released the week after IT. Too bad they couldn't have released it Labor Day weekend. Sure that's the weekend before IT, but it was never going to be leggy so they may as well have one good weekend. Could have done solid over that weekend. Genre films usually do. Or hell, maybe even earlier in August since that month was so dead. Oh well, I assume one day it will be considered a classic. And if, though it may be a long shot, Jennifer Lawrence gets a Golden Globe and/or Oscar nomination more will check it out on digital/DVD/Blu-ray.

These numbers really aren't that bad. It's an extremely polarizing film for Lawrence fans. This film doesn't make 1 million in total without her.

The trailer was good and Black Swan did well.

What a bad Comparison.

Black Swan was seven years ago, it had a better/more prestige release date and Oscar push, and was the follow up to The Wrestler. Mother is a horror film that had the "misfortune" (in quotes because $8 million is fine) of opening a week after one of the biggest horror films of all time.

Also apparently mother sucks lol according to audience

The TV spots for mother! were kind of funny. It said something like critics are calling it "the most important horror film ever to be released". I don't know. It made me chuckle, especially being released after It.

Correction, the spot said: "Mother! is the most talked about movie in years". Even more ridiculous and hilarious.

I wouldn't doubt that. But the talks were more "I don't know what the fuck this movie is"

It's the weirdest film I've seen in a while. I could put it on the Matrix/ Inception level for discussion.

There isn't a genuine star-driven hit this year.

Nolan drove Dunkirk to $180m+

But I know what you're saying, and it's because this isn't the 80s anymore. Stars don't drive hits anymore. The highest-grossing film this year that was star-driven is probably Atomic Blonde. These days it's all about the ensemble, the reviews, the franchise..

Or maybe The Hitman's Bodyguard.

It's mainly because there are so many more bad movies nowadays that it's harder for actors to avoid them. Actors used to be able to only pick good projects, and build up a reputation that said "if such and such is in it, it's worth admission price". But even the biggest actors nowadays are in shit movies and there's never a guarantee of quality anymore, except with DiCaprio and Denzel.

I'd also say The Hitman's Bodyguard is the biggest star-driven hit.

Atomic Blonde didn't perform all that well actually, but it's a good examples of where a film would have far from performed as well without (th)a(t) star involved. I'd call The Mummy (2017) (despite being an existing property, I think more saw it because of Cruise than anything else), Baywatch, The Great Wall and Kidnap (2017) other examples.

And then there's plenty of examples where even because of a star a film performed terribly anyway.