Box Office ‘Bullet Train’ #1 Movie, ‘Top Gun’ back in second place

is Everyone on holiday?

That would be a plausible explanation for the major box office slowdown. Although three new films opened nationwide, none managed to crack the top five on the domestic chart, and only two — A24’s satirical slasher ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ and Lionsgate’s dizzying thriller ‘Fall’ — managed to infiltrate the top 10 .

Worse still, Sony’s action thriller Bullet Train, which ranked first at $13.1 million out of 4,357 North American locations for the second straight weekend, was the only film to make at least $10 million brought in ticket sales. After two weeks on the big screen, Brad Pitt-directed “Bullet Train” has grossed $54.4 million at the domestic box office. This weekend is the first since February 11-13 – when Death on the Nile opened at a paltry $12.3 million and Jennifer Lopez’s romantic comedy Marry Me tumbled with even less – that just a film reaching at least $10 million between Friday and Sunday.

And the icy drop, drop, drop in ticket sales is only going to get worse as the box office heads down a near-dismal stretch with few new offerings from major studios on the horizon. As theater owners prepare for the downturn, they bow to Harry Styles in the hope that the pop heartthrob will inspire audiences to flock to theaters to see director Olivia Wilde’s stunning Don’t Worry Darling ‘ that doesn’t work. until September 23rd is not open. Until then, exhibitors will have to make do with smaller thrillers and dramas like Idris Elba’s “Beast,” which comes out on August 19; “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” a fantasy romance starring Tilda Swinton and Elba (again) on August 26; and the historical epic, The Woman King, directed by Viola Davis, on September 16.

In eighth place, Bodies Bodies Bodies surpassed expectations with $3.2 million from 1,290 locations. After launching in a limited edition last weekend, the film has grossed $3.5 million so far and plans to expand to over 2,000 theaters next weekend. But otherwise, audiences wanted little to do with Fall and Diane Keaton’s body-swap comedy Mack & Rita, the other film to debut over the weekend.

“Fall” came in at number 10 with $2.5 million from 1,548 venues. The film, which centers on two best friends who climb 2,000 feet to the top of an abandoned radio tower and find themselves stranded with no way down, was for Relatively low-risk, Lionsgate, costing only $3 million to produce and less than $4 million to advertise. It doesn’t take much money to turn a profit, and home entertainment will come in handy in this mission.

Elsewhere, Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi classic ET — which debuted 40 years ago — raked in more money than Keaton’s Mack and Rita over the weekend. The Gravitas Ventures release premiered at #13 with $1.03 million from 1,930 screens. Universal’s re-release of “ET” grossed $1.07 million on just 389 Imax screens.

As expected, Mack and Rita released mostly older women, with 74% of ticket buyers identifying as female and 69% over 30. They weren’t kind to the film, which landed a “D+” CinemaScore. Reviews were similarly harsh, resulting in a dismal score of 26% on Rotten Tomatoes.

With the dismal turnout for most other films, Paramount’s ever-mighty blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick plummeted to second place in its 12th weekend of release. The action sequel added $7.1 million from 3,181 venues over the weekend, taking the domestic balance sheet to $673.8 million. That means Maverick is about $5 million away from dethroning Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War as the sixth-highest-grossing film in domestic box office history.

There’s more to come…