It was a spooky weekend at the box office for nearly everyone but Tyler Perry. Perry's comedy sequel Boo 2! A Madea Halloween scared up a healthy $21.7 million in its first weekend in theaters, but the waters were rough for other new openers, including the disaster epic Geostorm, the firefighter drama Only the Brave and the crime thriller The Snowman. Boo 2! did a little less business than the first film, which opened to $28.5 million just last year. But a slight drop for a sequel hardly compares to the catastrophe of Geostorm, a long-delayed $120 million disaster epic starring Gerard Butler that only managed to open to $13.3 million from North American theaters.
Only the Brave, about the Granite Mountain Hotshots who took on the June 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire, also failed to attract sufficient audiences this weekend. The Sony film starring Josh Brolin, Jeff Bridges and Jennifer Connelly opened in fifth place with $6 million. Despite good reviews, it opened behind two holdovers—the horror pic Happy Death Day, which landed in third place with $9.4 million, and Blade Runner 2049, which took in $7.2 million in its third weekend in theaters. The Snowman, starring Michael Fassbender and based on the Jo Nesbo book, also failed to make a splash. The critically derided pic debuted in eighth place with $3.4 million from 1,812 theaters.
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