A DC villain without Batman, a three-hour documentary about a fallen Silicon Valley founder and a stop-motion fairy tale walk into a multiplex. That is the unusual mix leading the North American box office this weekend, with Warner Bros. and DC’s horror-tinged Clayface on track to finish first.

The numbers below are Friday estimates reported by Deadline; official weekend figures arrive on Sunday and can shift.

Clayface holds its shape

Clayface earned an estimated $9.5 million on Friday, including about $3.5 million from Thursday previews, and is heading for a $23 million to $25 million opening weekend from 3,458 theaters.

That is a solid start for a lower-budget genre bet. Deadline puts the net production cost at $44 million before marketing, and notes the opening lands in the neighborhood of other mid-October genre hits like Smile, which opened to $22.6 million.

The R-rated film is a stand-alone story directed by James Watkins from a screenplay by Mike Flanagan. Tom Rhys Harries stars as Matt Hagen, a baby-faced Hollywood actor whose reach for fame goes horribly wrong. Audiences seem to be on board: Deadline reports a 93% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes alongside a critics’ score in the mid-70s.

The documentary that will not slow down

The bigger surprise may be A24’s You Can See Everything, the three-hour documentary from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. After opening to $15.6 million last weekend in 855 locations, it expanded to 2,655 theaters on Friday and earned an estimated $5.8 million, up 5% from its opening day.

Deadline projects a second weekend of $19 million or more, which would be up about 22% from its debut and push its 10-day total to around $44.6 million. Some rivals think it could top $20 million. Documentaries almost never grow in their second weekend, let alone at this scale.

Wildwood and Wicker impress

Laika’s stop-motion feature Wildwood, released by Fathom and directed by Travis Knight, is tracking for $11 million or more in third place after a $4.2 million Friday. That is well ahead of the studio’s previous film, Missing Link, which opened to $5.9 million in 2019. Wildwood carries a 100% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Black Bear’s period comedy Wicker, starring Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård, is fifth with an estimated three-day haul of $6 million or more from 1,471 locations, a strong result for a specialty release.

Street Fighter slides

Last weekend’s champion, Paramount and Legendary’s Street Fighter, drops to fourth with an estimated $9.5 million weekend, a 79% fall, for a 10-day total of about $47.8 million.

Taika Waititi’s Klara and the Sun, starring Jenna Ortega and Amy Adams, is struggling in limited release, tracking toward roughly $900,000 from 880 locations.

What it means

The weekend is a useful reminder that audiences still show up for distinct, well-reviewed films, whether that is a villain-centered horror movie, a handcrafted animated fable or a documentary that people want to talk about. For DC, a modest-budget hit could open the door to more character-driven spinoffs. For A24, You Can See Everything is turning into one of the most talked-about releases of the fall.

We will know the final numbers on Sunday, but the shape of the weekend is already clear.

Image: Brea-edwards cinema night by Jonnyboyca at English Wikipedia via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain Mark 1.0