Deepwater Horizon, starring Mark Wahlberg, cost at least $110m to produce, featuring a nearly life-size replica of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.
In a crowded autumn weekend, Miss Peregrine came out on top.
Andrea Arnold’s road trip odyssey American Honey, with Shia LaBeouf and newcomer Sasha Lane, debuted with $75,370 on four screens.
Tim Burton’s latest fantastical oddity, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, earned a hefty $28.5m at the US box office in its first weekend on release, but Peter Berg’s acclaimed disaster movie Deepwater Horizon, about the 2010 oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, failed to attract an audience.