Historic start for Predator: Badlands at the US box office

Russell Crowe starts well, but Sydney Sweeney, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson lag behind.

Predator: Badlands creates a surprise and revives hope at the American box office.

Dan Trachtenberg’s film has a $40 million opening weekend! This is the absolute record for the franchise Predator 38 years old. Until now, the best launch was in 2004 with Alien vs. Predator and its $38.2 million. This time, the saga does better by spreading its entries over three days. In a market where blockbusters tend to crash on the second day, Predator: Badlands provides a rare dynamic: progress over the weekend, driven by solid word of mouth. With her, it’s Elle Fanning, who also signs the second best start of her entire career, behind Maleficent ($69.4 million in 2014). At 28, she landed her first massive success in an action film. Predator: Badlands already has 80 million dollars in total. Promising.

Behind this little phenomenon, Regretting You continues his marathon. The romantic drama, produced for $30 million by Constantin Film (the German production company best known for the Resident Evil saga), displays an almost indecent performance. It climbed 80% on Friday compared to the previous week and fell only 7% over the weekend, reaching an additional $7.3 million and a cumulative $38.7 million in North America. The trajectory is clear: the film is heading towards $100 million worldwide (70 million to date). In an industry obsessed with IPs and franchises, a mid-budget original film that performs like this is an event.

In third position, Black Phone 2 continues quietly on its way. Despite its release on VOD (November 4 in the United States), Universal’s horror film still collected $5.2 million this weekend despite a logical drop of 38%. It now has $70 million in the USA.

In the top 5 of this US box office, we note the good debut of Nurembergdistributed by Sony Pictures Classics, exceeded $4.1 million in an average audience of 1,800 theaters, thanks to spectacular returns. The studio hopes the historic film, starring Russell Crowe as Goering, does as well as Conclavea surprise success last fall. The French release is set for January 28, 2026.

In the independent field, NEON still carries out a precise operation with Sentimental Value by Joachim Trier, Grand Jury Prize in Cannes. The film posted one of the best per-theater results of the year with an average of $50,000 per screen.

Another Cannes film, Die My Lovewhich brings together a glamorous cast with Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, failed to perform. Distributed by Mubi, it only came in eighth position with $2.7 million over 3 days despite almost 2,000 copies. Lynne Ramsay’s romantic film divides critics and audiences.

Finally, a small opening for Sydney Sweeney in Christinethe biopic dedicated to the boxer Christy Martin, which starts at less than 1.3 million dollars for its first weekend, in a park of more than 2,000 theaters. Too weak.