Leave it to an undead hotel manager to inject a little life into the September box office.
Dracula and all his comi-creepy cohorts from Hotel Transylvania 2 siphoned an estimated $47.5 million out of moviegoers this weekend—enough entertainment lifeblood to claim a box office win and notch an earnings record for the month of September.
The old record-holder? The original Hotel Transylvania, of course, which blood-banked $42.5 million in its opening frame back in 2012. Guess it’s true what they say about Hotel Transylvania: You can check it out any time you like, but if it’s September, you can never leave. Without paying, I mean.
But even with Transylvania draining so much moolah out of moviegoers, there was still a little cash left for the also-rans. The Intern, another major newcomer, pulled an $18.2 million opening-weekend paycheck—not Transylvanian-sized loot, obviously, but a solid opening for this quiet, adult-centric comedy. It sprinted past last weekend’s winner, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, for second place. Scorch, meanwhile, settled into third with a still smoldering $14 mil.
Everest, the mountain-climbing movie that released solely on IMAX screens last week, expanded its theater count and, for its efforts, scaled to $13.1 million. It wasn’t enough, obviously, to summit the weekend’s box office peak, but it did manage to scramble to fourth place, ahead of No. 5 Black Mass.
The weekend’s third big freshman, The Green Inferno, gobbled up $3.5 million while playing at 1,540 horror-friendly theaters. Those are decent numbers for the controversial Eli Roth flick, according to Box Office Mojo … but it wasn’t enough to scare War Room, which finished just ahead of Inferno with $4.3 million. The Christian flick has now earned a tidy $56 million, which means it’s the seventh highest-grossing Christian film in history—fourth, if you exclude The Chronicles of Narnia movies.
Final figures update: 1. Hotel Transylvania 2, $48.5 million; 2. The Intern, $17.7 million; 3. Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, $14.3 million; 4. Everest, $13.2 million; 5. Black Mass, $11 million.
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