In an upset nobody saw coming, the third weekend of Warner Bros’ Beetlejuice Beetlejuice stole No. 1 away from Paramount and Hasbro Entertainment’s Transformers One, $26M to $25M.

On Friday and into Saturday AM, some saw a tight race between the Tim Burton-directed movie and the Josh Cooley-helmed animated pic, however, the notion was that matinees would work greatly in favor of the newer tentpole. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice had a great $11.8M Saturday to Transformers One‘s $9.1M.

At the end of the day, to see one franchise triumph over the other by a margin, well, that’s a rich man’s problem, err a major studio’s problem, though bountiful for exhibition. Threepeats are a great streak for any major studio to cherish at the B.O. Note, this is no doubt frustrating for Paramount Animation, which had a lot of faith in Transformers One as another potential lift for the Transformers brand after summer 2023’s Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (which worldwide at $438.9M made more than Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny), but alas, here’s the movie opening just a few notches above Bumblebee‘s $21.6M, and in the average mid $20M range of September animated movies (i.e. Open Season at $23.6M), not in the $30M-$40M+ higher threshold. What shouldn’t be ignored is that this is still a solid take for a $75M co-financed animated movie in September, especially with these exits. Not many major motion picture studios trotted down to San Diego Comic-Con (read, Warner Bros. sat out with Joker 2 and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice), but Paramount took Transformers One down there with Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry. As we told you yesterday, Transformers One in its sheer look appeared intended more for under 12 boys than fanboys, and that’s why there isn’t any great over-indexing going on as expected. Only $2M was made on IMAX screens for Transformers One; overall IMAX and PLF repped 35% of weekend ticket sales. Biggest demo for the film was men under 25 at 37%. Hasbro Entertainment controls the merchandise on the movie and that’s where the further riches are.

In regard to Lionsgate’s Halle Berry‘s Never Let Go with a $4.5M opening, and Mubi’s first wide release, the body swap horror movie, The Substance, starring Demi Moore, at $3.1M, read our Saturday deep dive below.

As far as Never Let Go, the numbers speak for themselves for Lionsgate’s Oscar winning Monsters Ball Best Actress and the studio’s latest string of bombs starting with Borderlands. Never Let Go is at the lower end of Berry’s box office openings, even lower than the Wachowskis’ disaster Cloud Atlas ($9.6M) — and it’s not her fault. Pre-Covid, little distributor Aviron saved her thriller, Kidnap, and got it to a $10M opening and that was with lower Rotten critical and audience scores (35%/50%) than Never Let Go‘s (65%/53%). Never Let Go is even on the lower end of openings for director Alexandre Aja — even lower than his CinemaScore C+ Crawl from 2019 which opened to $12M.

There’s something to be said about a post-Covid and post-strike moviegoing audiences that punishes lower grossing movies or even mid-budgeted movies more than a pre-pandemic one. But at the same time, Lionsgate is known to underspend on P&A, especially when the diagnostics on a theatrical release doesn’t look like a grand slam and to also appease shareholders in the ledgers (That said, the Nicolas Cage satire The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent was a missed opportunity, settling for a $7.1M opening. In the hands of an A24 or Sony, this could have been a bigger cult film after playing at its SXSW premiere like a rock concert). There will be more blood: Lionsgate has the $12M-$15M production Bagman going limited next weekend (it was originally built to go wider) at the same time they’re going wide with Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis (which is strictly a distribution deal for them). White Bird on Oct. 4, I understand, is a particularly hard sell. Clearing of slate, indeed.

As far as The Substance goes, the exits on this movie (B CinemaScore and 89% certified Rotten Tomatoes critics) are surprising for a horror film that can be polarizing. It will be interesting to see who gets the higher gross in the end, The Substance or Never Let Go. Right now the town is betting the Berry movie gets to low double digits over Substance, simply because Lionsgate is taller than Mubi.

The chart:

via Deadline