SPECTRE and Peanuts Combine For More than $100 Million in Big Box Office Weekend

Two of the most beloved franchises in popular culture combined for nearly $120 million in box office receipts this weekend, as the latest James Bond film SPECTRE took home $73 million and Peanuts made $45 million in their shared opening frame.

What will be interesting is to see how the films do long-term; SPECTRE scored just 62% on Rotten Tomatoes but earned an A- CinemaScore from audiences. Peanuts is Certified Fresh at 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, and scored an A from audiences.

With the holidays coming up, both films could turn out to have long legs — although later this month they’ll have to share screens and hype with the final installment of the Hunger Games series.

All of that sounds pretty good — and the numbers are strong — but the films still both failed to live up to many analysts’ projections, missing Box Office Mojo‘s expectations by about 20%.

Those missed expectations will likely be more widely discussed for SPECTRE. This is the first full-length theatrical feature to star the Peanuts gang, while it’s the 27th Bond film. The thinking had been that strong audience anticipation could translate into a box office opening close to that of Skyfall, which earned $88.3 million in its opening weekend. SPECTRE missed that by $15 million, but remains the second-biggest opening in the franchise’s history (right behind SPECTRE would be Quantum of Solace, which nabbed nearly $68 million).

Overall box office revenue for the weekend is expected to be around $162 million, a record for the first full weekend of November. In a year with so many high-profile disappointments, that’s good news for studios even if the top two spots didn’t quite hit the mark.