‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ Beats ‘Transformers One’ in Box Office Upset

Optimus Prime and Megatron put up a fight, but in the end, the robots were no match for everyone’s favorite bio-exorcist.

After an unusually close box office race, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” emerged victorious over newcomer Paramount and Hasbro’s animated “Transformers One” to retain the No. 1 spot for three consecutive weekends. The spooky Warner Bros. sequel added a strong $26 million from 4,172 theaters, bringing its tally to $225 million domestically and $329.7 million globally.

Meanwhile, “Transformers One” kicked off behind expectations with $25 million from 3,978 venues. It’s a meager start for the movie, which cost $75 million and was targeting a start of $30 million to $40 million. Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry and Scarlett Johansson lead the voice cast of “Transformers One,” the franchise’s first theatrical animated film since 1986’s “The Transformers: The Movie.” That film was a box office disappointment, though its reputation among fans has improved over the years.

“Transformers One,” an origin story directed by Josh Cooley (“Toy Story 4”) about the feuding Autobots and Decepticons, has received positive reviews and encouraging audience scores, so ticket sales could rebound in the coming weeks. Several post-pandemic animated films, including Pixar’s “Elemental” and Illumination’s “Migration,” ended up having the staying power to keep bringing in audiences in the months after their debuts. Yet “Transformers One” might face competition from “The Wild Robot,” an animated film that opens on Sept. 27.

“This is a lukewarm opening for an animation adaptation in a live-action series,” says David A. Gross of movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research. He believes it’s to be expected that initial revenues wouldn’t be anywhere near the live-action “Transformers” series, which have amassed $5.28 billion across seven films. “Industry expectations are high for a big series like this, but an animation adaptation is not going to hold all or even most its live-action audience,” Gross adds. “It’s too big a shift.”

Another newcomer, Lionsgate’s “Never Let Go,” landed in fourth place with a disappointing $4.5 million from 2,667 venues in its debut. The Halle Berry-led survival thriller is the latest bleak single-digit start for Lionsgate after last weekend’s assassin thriller “The Killer’s Game” ($2.6 million debut) and a string of August releases, including “The Crow” reboot ($4.6 million debut), “1992” ($1.6 million debut) and “Borderlands” ($8.6 million debut). Reviews and audience scores have been mixed — “Never Let Go” holds a 61% on Rotten Tomatoes and “C+” CinemaScore — which doesn’t necessarily bode well for word-of-mouth on the $20 million-budgeted film.

Also new to theaters is Demi Moore’s body-horror satire “The Substance,” which opened in sixth place with $3.1 million from 1,949 theaters. Coralie Fargeat (“Revenge”) directed the movie about an aging celebrity who takes a black market drug to recapture her youth. Mubi is releasing “The Substance,” which premiered at Cannes and earned Moore some of the best reviews of her career.

Elsewhere on box office charts, “Speak No Evil,” Universal and Blumhouse’s remake of the 2022 Danish thriller, slid to No. 3 with $5.9 million from 3,375 theaters. That’s a 48% decline from its opening, which is solid for the horror genre. The pitch-black comedy of manners, starring James McAvoy and Mackenzie Davis, has grossed $21.45 million in North America and $42 million worldwide to date.

Disney and Marvel’s superhero sequel “Deadpool & Wolverine” rounded out the top five with $3.8 million from 2,450 locations in its ninth weekend of release. The R-rated film, starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, has remained in the top three since it released in late July and has grossed a remarkable $627 million domestically and $1.317 billion globally to date. It’s the fifth-biggest domestic and seventh-largest global release in the MCU. It’s also the highest-grossing R-rated film in history.

In limited release, A24’s dark comedy “A Different Man” grossed $56,126 from four screens in New York and Los Angeles — translating to $14,031 per location. Directed by Aaron Schimberg and co-starring Sebastian Stan and Adam Pearson, the film follows an aspiring actor who undergoes a radical medical procedure to drastically transform his face. Sort of like “The Substance,” this extreme method of betterment doesn’t necessarily make everything better. “A Different Man” will expand again on Sept. 27 and continue to slowly roll out in North American through the fall.

Overall, domestic revenues are 11.9% behind the same point in 2023 and 25.7% behind 2019. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” has been the lone breakout of September, with Tim Burton’s film accounting for around 47% of domestic revenue for the otherwise sleepy month, according to Comscore.

“The marketplace is in dire need of a boost,” says senior Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “Fortunately, October is on track to deliver interesting [films, such as] ‘Joker: Folie À Deux,’ ‘Saturday Night’ and ‘Anora.’”