Monday Mixer: Madea's 'Boo' ousts Tom Hanks' 'Inferno'

Posted Monday, October 31, 2016 at 2:42 PM Central

by John Couture

Between Halloween parties and renewed interest in the World Series this year, it was pretty much assumed that the box office this weekend would be bad, but for one film it truly was abysmal. While the weekend was anything but great, it was significantly better than last year.

October was once dominated by horror films and while it was sort of a no-man's land between the big-budget action films of Summer and the serious dramas of awards season, a good horror film would always do big business. It was sort of a box office reprieve in the middle of a desolate wasteland.

Lately though, horror films have been staking out new ground in non-October months and the leftovers have been meh, at best. Of course, that begs the question, are audiences simply not in the mood for traditional shocker horror films this month, or are the offerings just terrible?

Unfortunately, I don't think that this year's Ouija: Origin of Evil will give us any answers. It's clearly not a good movie, so perhaps next year we'll get a horror film that we deserve and we can draw better conclusions. There is hope though...

Box Office 411

It's not like all Halloween films are doing poorly this year. Boo! A Madea Halloween, which is more of a comedy than a horror film, took home its second box office crown this week with $16.7 million. Tyler Perry's Madea is enjoying a nice resurgence and has upped its take to over $52 million so far.

Of course, the Halloween theme might bite the film in the rear end this week as it runs its course. Still, the film should limp to $75 million or so, which is a nice little comeback for Madea.

One franchise that is not enjoying a renaissance (see what I did there?), is the Dan Brown adaptations starring Tom Hanks as symbolist Robert Langdon. Inferno opened to a series worst $15 million and should signal an end to the expensive action films. As it stands, it will struggle to make $50 million.

At this point, I think more people would pay to see Tom Hanks in a David S. Pumpkins film than another Dan Brown book-turned-film. But, that's a discussion for another day.

The rest of the box office went as expected, but with a new month comes new promise. A slew of big films are on the horizon, so it should be interesting to see how it all shakes out.

Quick Hitters

• I'm not sure if this is a good news-good news thing or a bad news-good news thing, but it seems that Disney is serious about making Indiana Jones 5. The undeniable good news to this story though is the revelation that come out this week that George Lucas is not involved with the story of the film.

  So, I guess that means we can rule out anymore alien storylines. Thank God!

• In the spirit of Halloween, this short film "Teddy Bears are for Lovers" tries to capture the cute/creepy factor of stuffed animals.

• If you were curious as to where movie trailers got their name, wonder no more.

• Stranger Things was the breakout Netflix series of the Summer and recently, this mashup between it and Peanuts came about. You're welcome.