Billy Eichner's rom-com Bros couldn't best director Parker Finn's horror film Smile during the inaugural weekend of spooky season at the box office.
The horror film, centered on a psychiatrist (Sosie Bacon) who begins to encounter frightening occurrences after a patient takes her own life in front of her, debuted at No. 1 at the domestic box office with $22 million, according to Comscore. Finn's feature directorial debut is one of the better horror openings of the year, out-scaring Barbarian ($10 million) and The Invitation ($7 million).
"I wanted to set out to make something that was deeply frightening and feels like a sustained panic attack from start to finish," Finn recently told EW. "We're working with really heady themes and motifs and pairing them with these extraordinary circumstances. I really wanted to ground the story, the drama side of things, so [the audience] can really care about the character and go with her on that journey when it all really really starts to ramp up."
That involved a viral, frightening marketing campaign. Ahead of the film's release, Paramount, the studio behind the film, placed performers — employing the widest and creepiest smiles they could muster — at baseball games. "This is something that had been discussed a little while back and we were all kind of like crossing our fingers that somebody might notice," the director said.
At the global box office, Smile earned a formidable $36.5 million but ultimately could not be beat by director Rao Xiaozhi's Chinese drama Home Coming, which opened at No. 1 worldwide with $58.3 million. As for Bros, the LGBTQ rom-com starring Eichner and Luke Macfarlane opened in fourth place at the domestic box office with $4.8 million. The title couldn't top Don't Worry Darling or The Woman King, which remained in the top five at No. 2 and 3, respectively.
Olivia Wilde's thriller earned an additional $7.3 million during its second week in theaters, bringing the film's total to $32.8 million. Gina Prince-Bythewood's drama about the Agojie, the all-female warriors who protected the African kingdom of Dahomey in the 1800s, earned an additional $7 million during its third week, which brings the total to $46.7 million. The re-release of Avatar rounded out the top five, earning $4.6 million more on week two. James Cameron's sci-fi epic has made a total of $18.5 million so far.
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