Dune remains atop the box office charts for second week in a row

In news that will surely please Warner Bros. executives who decided to greenlight a sequel, Dune — Denis Villeneuve’s lovingly detailed adaptation of (the first half of) Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi novel — secured the top spot at the U.S. box office for the second week in a row. It’s a good movie with a good cast and a good director, so this pleases me.

That said, there are caveats. Dune took in $15 million more dollars, which is a 62% drop from its opening weekend. It’s amassed nearly $300 million worldwide, which is respectable, but below what would have been expected before COVID-19 scared people away from movie theaters. That’s why WarnerMedia opted to release Dune on HBO Max in addition to theaters, so it could diversify its revenue streams.

Anyway, other contenders this week included Halloween Kills and No Time to Die, which raked in $8.5 million and $7 million respectively. Here’s the full list:

1. Dune
2. Halloween Kills
3. No Time To Die
4. My Hero Academia: World Heroes’ Mission
5. Venom: Let There Be Carnage
6. Last Night In Soho
7. Antlers
8. Ron’s Gone Wrong
9. The Addams Family 2
10. The French Dispatch

Dune will surely be knocked out of the top spot this weekend when Marvel releases Eternals.

Peacock loses half a billion dollars

Speaking of studios making less money than they’d want, The Hollywood Reporter has it that Peacock — NBC’s streaming service — lost $520 million in adjusted revenue over the last quarter. CEO Jeff Shell isn’t too pressed about it, though. “Everything on Peacock is heading in the right direction, and there is really nothing from a trajectory perspective that is any different from what it was last quarter,” he said during the company’s quarterly earnings call this week. “All metrics are pointed up: our usage continues to be great, our mix of users.”

To be fair, it is pretty common for streaming services to operate at a loss for a while before they get enough subscribers to break even and, if you’re Netflix, eventually just print money. Still, $520 million is a lot to just wave away like that, especially if it keeps happening for too long. The streaming wars rage on:

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