‘Smile’ Continues to Kill at International Box Office, ‘Ticket to Paradise’ Hits $70 Million Overseas

Refresh for latest…: Warner Bros/New Line DC’s Black Adam in its second offshore frame saw a strong hold, down just 45%. It added $39M from 76 offshore markets to take the running international box office total to $139M for a global cume through Sunday of $250M.

Universal/Working Title’s Ticket to Paradise has winged past the $100M mark globally. With Tuesday’s grosses included, the Julia Roberts/George Clooney romcom’s split is $20.6M domestic and $81.9M from the international box office for a worldwide total of $102.5M so far.

A star-studded event! George Clooney and Julia Roberts brought their fashion A-game to the Los Angeles premiere of their new movie, Ticket to Paradise.

Broadway box office held steady at $28,621,480 last week as a slate of new productions began or continued previews (Almost Famous and Kimberly Akimbo filled more than 90% of their seats), MJ and Leopoldstadt set house records and The Phantom of the Opera was once again standing room only as the long-running Andrew Lloyd Webber musical heads toward its Feb. 18 closing.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief While the Busan International Film Festival was busily hailing a return to normality the slump at South Korea’s commercial box office deepened dramatically over the most recent weekend. Cinemagoing nationwide was worth only $4.20 million between Friday and Sunday, the lowest weekend total since April and a time before Korean cinemas shed their COVID restrictions. The weekend’s top film “Life Is Beautiful” managed the lowest first place score of any film this year, with a weekend haul of just $777,000, according to data from Kobiz, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (KOFIC).

Refresh for latest…: Horror ruled at the global and international box office again this session with Universal/Blumhouse’s Halloween Ends bowing to $17.2M in 77 overseas markets for a $58.4M worldwide launch. Last week’s champ, Paramount’s Smile, put in another scary strong performance, dropping just 16% with $16.3M in 61 markets, to beam at a running offshore total of $66.4M and $137.6M global. The latter had crossed $100M worldwide on Tuesday.

Independent projections predicted a $50 million opening weekend for the Universal and Blumhouse picture, on par with that of “Halloween Kills.” The 2021 sequel scored $4.9 million at its Thursday box office debut. In 2018, “Halloween” made $7.7 million on its first night and went on to earn an eye-popping $77.5 million from its opening weekend – the second highest of any rated-R horror movie at the time.Set four years after the events of “Halloween Kills,” “Halloween Ends” presents the last showdown between Laurie Strode (Curtis) and longtime nemesis Michael Myers.

Paramount’s Parker Finn-directed horror pic Smile has laughed its way across the $100M mark globally. And it did so in under two weeks of release. Through Tuesday, the gross is $102.3M worldwide, made up of $55.5M domestic and $46.8M from the international box office. 

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter After two years of upheaval and unfamiliarity at the box office, there’s something refreshingly familiar about the theatrical release of “Tár.” The acclaimed movie, directed by Todd Fields and starring Cate Blanchett as a world-famous conductor embroiled in a controversy of her own making, generated a stellar $160,000 from four theaters (two in New York City and two in Los Angeles) over the weekend, averaging a mighty $40,000 per location. Next weekend, it’s expanding its theater count (ever so slightly), to 30 new venues in 10 domestic markets. That kind of steady and deliberately paced rollout, one that relies almost entirely on positive word-of-mouth, is about as traditional as it gets for an arthouse film. Yet for most of the pandemic, it was rendered obsolete.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Patriotic rescue film “Homecoming” largely dominated the Chinese box office over the latest weekend and brought to a close a deeply-depressed National Day holiday period. “Homecoming” earned $21.5 million between Friday and Sunday to lift its ten-day cumulative to $163 million, according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway. That score accounted for a 71% share of the weekend’s $30.3 million total. Second-placed film “Ordinary Hero” earned just $2.2 million, giving it a ten-day total of $19.7 million. Previous top-ranking film, “Give Me Five” held on to third place, despite the volley of new releases on either September 30 or October 1. It collected $1.7 million for a cumulative of $60.8 million since release on Sept. 9, 2022.

Paramount’s Smile is positively grinning ear-to-ear as the horror pic from director Parker Finn saw a wild 19% upswing in holdovers at the international box office in its second frame. The weekend gross was $17.5M in 61 markets for a $40M offshore cume and $89.9M global to date.

Universal/Working Title’s Ticket to Paradise, the latest big-screen collaboration for Julia Roberts and George Clooney, has led the duo to a new milestone. Five films in which the mega-stars worked together have now grossed a combined $1B at the global box office. 

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “Ticket to Paradise,” a romantic comedy that reunites Julia Roberts and George Clooney, is (surprise, surprise) charming audiences at the international box office. The movie has generated $60 million overseas to date, a promising start given the current challenges facing theatrical rom-coms. Of course, it helps when the genre gets a boost from megawatt stars like Roberts and Clooney. According to Universal, which is backing the film, “Ticket to Paradise” is outpacing recent meet-cute stories like “The Lost City,” “Last Christmas” and “Crazy Rich Asians” at the same point in their respective big-screen rollouts. Over the weekend, “Ticket to Paradise” earned $10.5 million from 61 territories, including debuts in France ($1 million), Mexico ($1 million) and Italy ($800,000). In holdover markets, “Ticket to Paradise,” which features Clooney and Roberts as exes who try to stop their daughter from marrying a near stranger, has been popular in Australia ($8.5 million), the United Kingdom and Ireland ($7.4 million) and Germany ($7.4 million). It opens Oct. 21 in the U.S. and Canada.

“Smile” has become the latest original horror film, joining Universal/Blumhouse’s “The Black Phone” and 20th Century’s “Barbarian” to find low budget success thanks to strong word-of-mouth among horror fans. Against a production budget of $17 million, “Smile” now has a 10-day domestic total of $50 million, creating an intriguing match-up next weekend as the theatrically exclusive film goes up against a franchise horror film, Universal/Blumhouse’s “Halloween Ends,” which has a much higher profile but will also be released day-and-date on Peacock this Friday.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Grappling with free-falling theatrical admissions and misplaced blame by exhibitors on so-called “auteur” movies, the leading lights of the French film industry sounded the alarm about the state of the country’s cinema sector during a dramatic and emotional conference. The jam-packed event on Thursday, called Appel aux Etats Generaux (Call for General Assemblies), was organized by some of France’s most established producers including Saïd Ben Saïd, Judith Lou Levy and Philippe Carcassone, who work frequently with directors Paul Verhoven, Mati Diop and Florian Zeller, respectively. The conference was held at the Institut du Monde Arabe, a cultural venue headed by Jack Lang, who served as minister of culture throughout the 1980s. More than 400 people attended the event, including members of the independent distributors guild (DIRE) and the directors guild SRF, the governing body of Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight.

Big Little Lies producer Bruna Papandrea’s production company, Made Up Stories, is expanding with a new UK office run by Sarah Harvey, who has joined the company as a producer and creative director. Harvey officially began her new position in August.

Bruna Papandrea’s Made Up Stories, the film and TV production company behind “Big Little Lies” and “Nine Perfect Strangers,” among others, is expanding its presence to open a new U.K. office, and it’s tapped “Ticket to Paradise” producer Sarah Harvey to lead the office.

It was a varied offering at the international box office this weekend with newcomers from Hollywood and offshore markets, as well as notable holds, as we inch closer to full-on action later in October.