Weekend box office keeps its Smile for a second week

If we’ve learned anything since the release of Smile last week, it’s that audiences love to be smirked at. Whether it’s Tom Cruise showing those pearly whites from the cockpit of his F-18, or a possessing spirit that turns hosts into grinning ghouls, audiences want someone to look at them and express joy. Or, so we presume, because Smile will retain its place atop the top of the box office this weekend, per The Numbers.

Yes, Paramount continues its surprisingly excellent year sans superhero cinematic universes (unless you count Sonic The Hedgehog). With an additional $17.6 million, Smile’s total widened to $49 million. Not bad for a movie with the premise “the smile that makes you dead,” but it wasn’t all smiles at the theater this weekend.

Shaking off mixed reviews, incomprehensible trailers, and reminders of abuse allegations against director David O. Russell, Amsterdam made like Joy and crashed at the box office. Russell’s latest, starring Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, and a slew of Oscar winners, failed to attract audiences with a marketing strategy of Christian Bale being goofy. So is this Knives Out, American Hustle, or The Prestige? Moviegoers didn’t bother to find out, and the movie landed with a thud at number three.

And what of Lyle, you ask. Sony’s latest addition to the genre of anthropomorphic CGI animal has an adventure with a human child, Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, grossed $11 million this weekend. This was something of a disappointment for the $50 million signing reptile movie. Hard to believe that children weren’t dying to see Shawn Mendes serenade Javier Bardem, but what do kids know anyway?

Holdovers stood firm in the rest of the top five. The Woman King scrounged up an additional $5.3 million for a domestic total of $54 million. And the movie that nobody could stop talking about until they saw it, Don’t Worry, Darling, landed at number five with $3.4 million.

Here’s the rest of the top ten:

1) Smile

2) Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile

3) Amsterdam

4) The Woman King

5) Don’t Worry, Darling

6) Avatar

7) Barbarian

8) Bros

9) Top Gun: Maverick

10) Bullet Train