We often lament the lack of ‘medium-sized’ films in this space, concerned as we are that the rise of event movie blockbuster culture prevents smaller, more interesting films, from taking hold in the popular imagination. But the weekend’s box office results showed that this concern may be a tad overstated.

As it turns out, medium-sized movies can still play a significant role at the multiplex. The weekend’s box office also offered some interesting takeaways in regards to the role brands play in determining narrative success.

Movies based on popular TV shows aren't rare, but movies based on PBS shows are. It's also rare for a theatrically-released movie to essentially function as a continuation of a TV show, à la Sex and the City.

Downton Abbey is a stellar example of both of these things, added to the fact that it opened in the top spot to a highly impressive $31 million over the weekend. Not only that, it beat two movies featuring two of the biggest stars in Hollywood. This is a pertinent reminder that gentile storytelling isn't entirely dead, and that blood and spandex are not required for a movie to pull in a huge crowd.

Perhaps it was the fact that Downton Abbey so drastically flies in the face of modern movie trends that made it such a hot ticket. After a summer of superheroes and horror, audiences embraced a much more humble kind of narrative. Even if nobody would describe the Dowager Countess Violet Crawley (played so memorably by Dame Maggie Smith) as humble.

It's the kind of result that will no doubt have Focus Features considering another cinematic continuation of the beloved series—and it couldn't be worse than Sex and the City 2. Like that film, the audience for Downton Abbey is thought to be primarily female, and this is yet another example of Hollywood “learning” that women buy movie tickets too.

Downton Abbey's dominance is a definite win for a certain kind of storytelling, and it's pretty remarkable that it surpassed two other new movies featuring Brad Pitt and Sylvester Stallone.

Pitt's movie, Ad Astra, came in second with a take of just over $19 million. It's still a reasonably impressive number, considering that the science fiction-drama-thriller is being primarily perceived as a more cerebral film than most movies involving spaceflight.

The film has more action than its reputation suggests, but if cinemagoers were viewing it as offering something highfalutin before buying their tickets, then the numbers show that audiences are willing to embrace something with intentions beyond spectacle. 

Coming in third place was Rambo: Last Blood, which can't help but feel like something of a last gasp for a once massive franchise. The reviews were almost universally negative, but the Rambo series has never really been about critical praise. That the latest instalment earned a decent $19 million shows how much goodwill the macro movie audience still has for the character, and Stallone, whose movies mostly tend to go straight-to-digital these days. And there's no denying that Rambo: Last Blood stood as effective counterprogramming to Downton Abbey's unexpected dominance.

Although these are three very different movies, they could all reasonably be described as ‘medium-sized’ which is a healthy sign for the state of such narratives , considering they were all able to garner a relatively large audience.