The Numbers now says that opening weekend is 59.1 percent of the domestic total, and it puts the film’s legs, total gross divided by the biggest weekend, at 1.69. The first three days have done more business than the week and the weekend that followed them. The weekdays were not empty. Monday, October 12, a holiday, was $300,709. Tuesday was $359,982. By Thursday night, still in all 2,263 theaters, the film had added about $1.04 million since Sunday and stood at $3,150,795. Thursday itself was $134,062, the last day Mojo calls final.
Friday is where the run changes. The theater count falls to 1,270, and the estimated dailies are $153,491, $160,870, and $115,826. Friday was down 83.6 percent from opening Friday. Across the smaller map, the weekend averages about $339 a theater. Mojo ranks the film 19th on a weekend chart it labels an estimate. The Numbers carries the same $430,187 and rounds the decline to 80 percent.
A theater cut of that size will shrink the gross even if every remaining room holds its pace. The rooms that stayed fell well short of the opening pace. The opening average was $935. If the 1,270 theaters that stayed had matched it, the weekend would have been about $1.2 million. The estimate is $430,187, about a third of that pace and about a fifth of the opening weekend. Losing theaters accounts for part of the 79.7 percent drop. The lower average accounts for the rest.
What Angel’s last wide release did
The comparison that puts those figures in scale is Angel’s previous wide release, Runner, with Alan Ritchson and Owen Wilson. It opened September 11 at $6,462,290 from 2,568 theaters. Its second weekend was $3,007,648, down 53 percent, from 2,472 theaters, according to The Numbers. It lost 96 theaters. Badman lost 993. Runner’s per-theater average fell from $2,516 to $1,217, which is a real decline, and that second-weekend average was still more than three times Badman’s. Badman’s entire domestic total, $3.58 million, is only a little higher than what Runner grossed in its second weekend alone. Same studio, five weeks apart, two different results from a wide booking.
Runner’s later weeks show how quickly an Angel booking can shrink after the second weekend. The map fell to 1,303 theaters in week three, 340 in week four, and 78 in week five, when the weekend gross was $30,034. Angel put the film on video October 13. Badman is earlier in that timeline, with a weaker opening average and a much larger week-two cut already booked. Those later Runner numbers are a comparison from the same distributor. The next Badman chart is still unwritten.
This particular weekend was also a hard one for films already in theaters. Mojo’s estimated chart has Paramount’s Street Fighter opening at $31 million, with several other new wide releases behind it. Other Mommy, last week’s No. 1, is estimated at $8.35 million, down 70 percent, and it added five theaters. Badman fell further, and it gave back almost a thousand theaters. A crowded frame put pressure on older films across the chart. Badman’s theater loss is larger than that pattern, and exhibitors had already made the cut before this weekend’s gross existed.
Rotten Tomatoes currently lists a 23 percent Tomatometer from 13 reviews and a 77 percent Popcornmeter from more than 100 verified ratings. Thirteen reviews is a thin critics sample, and an audience score does not say who bought a ticket on Friday. The box-office pages do not connect those scores to the gross. What they show is a film that opened modestly on a wide Angel map and then lost both theaters and pace in week two.
Angel had already put Badman on the theatrical list it said the Guild would carry, between Runner and Drummer Boy, which is dated November 6. Zero A.D. is December 11. New Zealand is still October 22, and Australia is November 26. Neither country has a gross on Mojo or The Numbers. Monday’s actuals may revise $430,187. The question after that is whether the 1,270 theaters are still booked next weekend. Runner kept nearly its whole map for one more week and then lost it. Badman has already lost 993 of its 2,263 opening theaters, about 44 percent, before that next test arrives.
