Paramount’s “Smile,” a horror movie starring Sosie Bacon and Jessie T. Usher, is the No. 1 movie in North America, earning $22 million over the weekend. ‘Smile,’ Parker Finn’s debut feature film, cost just $17 million to make before marketing. ‘Smile’ follows a therapist (Sosie Bacon) treating a graduate student (Caitlin Stasey) who recently witnessed a gruesome suicide. Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner, Robin Weigert and Kal Penn co-star.
The marketing campaign for ‘Smile’ went viral in recent days after Paramount hired several people to maintain the film’s signature creepy smile when sitting behind home base at several major league baseball games. Paramount president of production Chris Aronson said: “It was the exclamation point on a great campaign.”
Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling fell to the No. 2 spot wit a 62 percent drop, and putting the movie’s 10-day domestic total at $32.8 million.
Tri-Star’s The Woman King came in No. 3 with $7 million, down just 36 percent in its third weekend for a domestic total nearing $47 million.
Universal and Nicholas Stoller’s high-profile Bros, the first gay romantic comedy from a major Hollywood studio which cost $22 million to make, opened in a disappointing 4th place. Bros, starring Billy Eichner, was embraced by critics following its world premiere at the 2022 Toronto Film Festival. It earned a 95 percent critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, and audiences gave it an A CinemaScore.
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