A shorter weekend means that Stephen King’s “It” will only pull in another $54 million this frame, based on Friday night’s numbers as assessed by Deadline.com. 

It’s already earned over $212 million. And it isn’t facing any serious opposition from this weekend’s challengers. It is now the biggest box office hit ever to open in Sept.

“American Assassin,” another opportunity for Michael Keaton to swipe a thriller from a younger star, is on a $15-17 million clip. Not bad for an action picture opening. But “franchise?” That’s a stretch. We’ll see if Lionsgate revisits these characters and this Vince Flynn novel.

Deadline.com makes much of the fact that exit-polling (Cinemascore) has audiences confused and enraged — Explains the state of our politics, doesn’t it? — by “Mother!”, Darren Aronofsky’s well-reviewed but cryptic “Rosemary’s Baby” meets “The Creative Process” thriller. I’m not the only critic to take a stab at interpreting what it’s about. But I’m the one who got it right,  which explains the uptick in web traffic to this site this weekend. In any event, “Mother!” is doing a much-more-normal for a horror picture $8-9 million its opening weekend.

“Annabelle: Creation” will hit the $100 million mark by Monday. “Dunkirk” is in its last weekend in the top ten, and will cash out altogether just shy of $200 million, domestic.