Box Office: Chainsaw Man rules the weekend as the Springsteen biopic unexpectedly flops

Score another big victory for anime, with CrunchyRoll’s Chainsaw Man: The Movie looking like it will easily top the box office this weekend with at least a $15 million opening. That’s higher than the $10 million we predicted earlier this week, with anime fans clearly becoming a force in theaters. Thank God for them, as movie theaters have been dying this fall, with all of the awards movies like Roofman, The Smashing Machine and After the Hunt all falling flat. The latest casualty of the dying marketplace is Searchlight’s big-budget Bruce Springsteen biopic, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere. While widely expected to top the weekend box office, Deadline is reporting that it will be lucky to make $10 million this weekend, for a distant 4th place finish. 

What’s going on here? Many assumed a Springsteen biopic was money in the bank, but perhaps director Scott Cooper went too niche by shifting the focus onto one specific moment in The Boss’s life: when he was composing the “Nebraska” album. The B+ CinemaScore is fine, but it seems likely folks are waiting until the inevitable Hulu launch a few weeks from now.

Another unexpected flop is the latest Colleen Hoover adaptation, Regretting You, which will finish with only $13 million (give or take) this weekend. Bad reviews (including our own from Tyler Nichols) and poor word of mouth (a B CinemaScore rating is bad for a romance) are torpedoing this one. Last week’s champ, The Black Phone 2, is looking at a $12 million weekend, which would be about a 56% decline, which is good for a horror film. Chris Stuckmann’s Shelby Oaks, which is earning poor reviews (including our own), is expected to make about $2.3 million for the weekend.

What are you seeing this weekend? Let us know in the comments.  

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