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Box office hits and misses: ‘The Girl on the Train’ wins while ‘Finding Dory’ hits milestone

There was no shortage of drama on the screen over the weekend, with new releases The Girl on the Train and The Birth of a Nation both enjoying top-ten premieres — but one film had a much better time of it than its counterpart.

Director Tate Taylor’s adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ best-selling novel The Girl on the Train finished atop the weekend box office with a $24.6 million debut, despite relatively poor reviews from professional critics and general audiences. The tense drama starring Emily Blunt cut short the one-week reign of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children at the top of the domestic box-office rankings and bumped Tim Burton’s fantasy film down to second place.

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The scenario was flipped for Nate Parker’s slave-rebellion drama The Birth of a Nation, which earned a mere $7.1 million — well below expectations for the festival darling — despite earning overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics and general audiences.

# Title Weekend U.S. Total Worldwide Total
1. The Girl on the Train $24.6M $24.6M $41.1M
2. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children $15M $51M $145M
3. Deepwater Horizon $11.7M $38.5M $66.3M
4. The Magnificent Seven $9.1M $75.9M $134.6M
5. Storks $8.4M $50.1M $106.1M
6. The Birth of a Nation $7.1M $7.1M $7.1M
7. Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life $6.9M $6.9M $6.9M
8. Sully $5.2M $113.4M $167.1M
9. Masterminds $4.1M $12.7M $12.7M
10. Queen of Katwe $1.6M $5.3M $5.3M

The weekend also featured a landmark moment for Finding Dory, Pixar’s wildly successful, animated sequel to Finding Nemo, which crossed the $1 billion mark worldwide. The film is just the second Pixar project to pass that mark (after 2010’s Toy Story 3), and the third Disney release to earn at least $1 billion worldwide this year alone (after Captain America: Civil War and Zootopia). Finding Dory now ranks as the highest-grossing animated film of all time domestically with $484 million in U.S. theaters as of October 9, and the fifth highest-grossing animated film of all time worldwide.

The upcoming week isn’t expected to be a big one at the box office, with Ben Affleck’s thriller The Accountant the favorite to win the weekend, and the big-screen adaptation of the Max Steel toy franchise also hitting theaters.

Rick Marshall
Former Contributing Editor, Entertainment
A veteran journalist with more than two decades of experience covering local and national news, arts and entertainment, and…
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