The Liam Neeson-led thriller Honest Thief stayed atop the box office charts this weekend with an estimated $2.35M haul, down some 36%, which brings its total to $7.5M through three weeks of release, per Deadline. Yikes. There’s really not much else to be said aside from: this pandemic sucks and has impacted the movie-going business hard.
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Now, here’s the bad news: there doesn’t appear to be a ray of sunshine in the foreseeable future. Even the upcoming Christmas lineup, featuring the oft-delayed Wonder Woman 1984, may be in jeopardy. Nobody is blaming the studios, especially after Tenet’s lackluster showing in the United States where it has collected just $52.5M total after nine weeks of release. And, as pointed out by Deadline, Disney quietly releases The Empty Man onto 2,027 theaters with absolutely zero fanfare. That film opened at No. 4 with $1.26M just ahead of the re-release of Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas ($577K) and Disney’s own re-release of Hocus Pocus ($530K) and Monsters Inc. ($494K).
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There is some optimism that important markets in Los Angeles and New York City will open soon but it all depends on whether California and NY can move into the red tier, which would allow theaters to allow 25% auditorium capacity. We’ll just have to wait and see.