“Nightcrawler” (Open Road Films), an $8.5 million crime drama starring Jake Gyllenhaal, took in an estimated $10.91 million over the weekend, enough to rank atop the North American box office.
With the strongly reviewed “Nightcrawler” — together with his similarly gritty “End of Watch,” a 2012 hit — Mr. Gyllenhaal may have finally found his niche; for a time, studios unsuccessfully tried to make him a romantic lead (“Love & Other Drugs”) and an action hero (“Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time”).
“Nightcrawler” had little new competition over the Halloween weekend, as Hollywood — worried about competing with trick-or-treating on Friday night — held back new releases. Rentrak, a firm that compiles box-office data, said on Sunday that “Ouija” (Universal Pictures) took second place by a sliver, generating $10.9 million in ticket sales, for a two-week domestic total of about $35 million. “Fury” (Sony Pictures Entertainment) chugged along in third place, taking in an estimated $9.1 million, for a three-week total of $60.4 million.
The only other new wide release, the thriller “Before I Go to Sleep” (Clarius), starring Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth, proved a complete snooze, with just $2 million in ticket sales, for 14th place. An experiment by Lionsgate to rerelease the decade-old serial killer hit “Saw” ended with a horrific $650,000 from 2,063 locations.