By Emmanuel King
A movie about an actor who loses his face is the No. 1 film in America. DC Studios’ Clayface, the R-rated body horror story of rising star Matt Hagen, opened in first place with $24 million from 3,458 theaters, including $3.5 million from Thursday previews and a $10.6 million Friday. The reported production budget is $44 million net, before prints and advertising, and opening-night audiences gave it an A- CinemaScore, a grade horror films almost never earn. It holds 76% from critics and 94% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. Overseas it added $19 million from 76 territories for a $43 million global opening, a touch under the $45 million the industry had hoped for, and it gives the newly combined Paramount-Warner Bros. company its second straight weekend at No. 1 following Street Fighter.
The near upset is the story of the fall. A24’s You Can See Everything, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s three-hour documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, expanded from 855 theaters to 2,655 in its second weekend and did something almost unheard of: it outgrossed its own opening. The second weekend came in at $19.5 million, up 25% from its $15.6 million debut, powered by a $6.1 million Friday that was itself up 11% on the film's first Friday. It also topped the box office on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday of this week. Ten days in, it stands at $45.1 million domestic, and audiences are rewarding it with five stars on PostTrak. Deadline called a second weekend bigger than the first "just spectacular," and the film does not even open overseas until November.
Third place belongs to Laika’s Wildwood, the studio’s first original animated film in seven years, which opened to $11.6 million from 2,942 theaters through Fathom, including about $1 million in previews. Its A CinemaScore matches Kubo and the Two Strings for the best in Laika’s history, alongside 100% from critics and 98% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, and it added $3 million from 11 territories overseas for a $14.3 million global start.
Further down, Wicker continues the weekend’s theme. The Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård period romance earned $5.75 million from just 1,471 theaters, including $2.36 million on Friday and $620,000 in previews, against a reported budget of about $10 million, with 93% from critics and 94% from audiences. Last weekend’s champion, Street Fighter, fell 72% to $8.6 million in its second frame for a $46.9 million domestic total. Taika Waititi’s Klara and the Sun, starring Jenna Ortega, opened quietly to $725,000 from 880 locations. The full North American marketplace took in $101 million, up 33% from the same weekend a year ago.
The result lands as relief inside Warner Bros., which has endured a brutal 2026 with Digger, Practical Magic 2 and Supergirl, the $170 million production that opened to $37.1 million this summer. Clayface cost roughly a quarter of that, and the combined company crossed $1 billion at the domestic box office on Monday, the fourth studio to reach the mark this year.
WHAT IT MEANS FOR ACTORS
Start with the premise at the top of the chart. Clayface is a tragedy about an actor whose face is his career, carried by Tom Rhys Harries, far from a household name, under one of the most demanding transformations in recent memory, with Naomi Ackie opposite him. There is no franchise safety net doing the work here; an A- from opening-night audiences is a verdict on performance and word of mouth, and it is what separates this opening from the fronthened collapses around it.
The money tells the same story at every level of the chart. The films working this weekend are the ones priced so that audiences can make them hits: a $44 million horror film, a $10 million romance built around two actors in a village, a stop motion studio betting on craft, and a documentary about a single riveting subject that grew in its second weekend because people will not stop talking about it. The weekend’s failures spent the most and gave audiences the least to repeat to their friends.
For actors reading the chart, the pattern is encouraging and specific. Studios are learning, expensively, that a known face is no longer a business model by itself. What travels is a performance people describe afterward, in a film the studio can afford to let them find.
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