Weekend box office: Madea douses Inferno as Da Vinci Code threequel flops

The flames of Tyler Perry’s mega-popular Madea series rage on as Boo! A Madea Halloween holds steady at No. 1 atop the North American box office, dousing Tom Hanks’ Inferno, which debuts to a paltry $14.9 million in the runner-up position.

With its $17.2 million haul, Perry’s holiday-themed comedy registers the best second weekend percentage drop of any film in Perry’s filmography, including non-Madea titles. The film’s cumulative total now stands at just over $52.5 million after 10 days in theaters.

Inferno, the Tom Hanks-starring vehicle, serves as the weekend’s sole new wide release, but proves to be no match for the holdover, paling in comparison to the box office performance of its forerunners, which premiered to $77.1 million and $46.2 million in 2006 and 2009, respectively.

Though the film, which marks director Ron Howard’s second underperformer released in the last year (his In the Heart of the Sea fizzled with $25 million total in December), gets off to an unhealthy start in the U.S. and Canada, its international totals more than make up for the domestic misstep; the film has thus far earned roughly $147.6 million globally, doubling its reported $75 million budget.

Audiences were kinder to the Da Vinci Code threequel than critics were, however, with polled moviegoers giving the film an average B+ grade on CinemaScore, while critics lampooned the picture as reviews poured in on Friday, accounting for the film’s 20 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes (with an average rating of 4.4/10).

Dropping significantly from its decent $22.9 million opening is Tom Cruise’s Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, which falls 57.9 percent for a weekend gross of $9.6 million, bringing the $60 million production’s worldwide total to around $93.9 million.

Rounding out the top five are Ben Affleck’s The Accountant, slipping to No. 4 with a healthy estimated $8.5 million ($61.3 million total) and the Ouija prequel Origin of Evil, which likely benefits from being the only major horror title in wide release heading into the Halloween holiday as it falls 49.4 percent to an estimated $7.1 million.

Elsewhere on the chart, the Indian romance Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, featuring some of the country’s biggest stars, including Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Ranbir Kapoor, makes a solid debut at No. 10 on the North American chart, pulling in an estimated $2.2 million from 302 screens for a per-screen average of $7,252.

A24’s likely Oscar contender Moonlight continues to dazzle on the specialty front, registering the highest per-theater average of the week for the second frame in a row, pulling in another $850,114 as it expands to 36 locations. Its domestic total now stands at an estimated $1.42 million. The week’s strongest limited debut, however, is Jim Jarmusch’s Stooges documentary Gimme Danger, which earns $44,725 from three theaters.

Yearly box office is up around 3.4 percent from the same frame in 2015.

Check out the Oct. 28-30 weekend box office totals below.

1. Boo! A Madea Halloween – $17.2 million

2. Inferno – $14.9 million

3. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back – $9.6 million

4. The Accountant – $8.5 million

5. Ouija: Origin of Evil – $7.1 million

6. The Girl on the Train – $4.4 million

7. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – $4 million

8. Keeping Up with the Joneses – $3.4 million

9. Storks – $2.9 million

10. Ae Dil Hai Mushkil – $2.2 million