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Beetlejuice Beetlejuice must have been uttered thrice at Warner Bros. as it hit its projected take for its opening weekend. $110 million was enough to make it the third biggest opening of the year, just behind Deadpool & Wolverine and Inside Out 2 respectively.
The nostalgia effect is again a big money maker for summer movie service. First Deadpool & Wolverine opened big then Alien: Romulus found success in its opening weekend, but it couldn’t stay on top for its second.
Speaking of second place, Deadpool & Wolverine ($7.2 million -53%) may have finally finished its theatrical cycle atop the box office chart making room for Beetlejuice which has no real competition until early October with Joker 2. This week James McAvoy will get his shot to enter the box office list with Speak No Evil, but it might be closer to the bottom, because it’s the U.S. remake nobody needed, and two, horror movies may have reached the point of saturation and fans are tired of being disappointed. More on that later.
Conservatives and history buffs are still keeping Reagan in the top three ($5.2 million -18%), and Alien: Romulus holds footing at number four ($3.9 million -58%). The success is neverending for romance drama It Ends With Us at number five ($3.7 million –49%)
Then there is The Forge ($2.9 million -36%), Twisters ($2.2 million -71%), Blink Twice ($2.1 million -71%), and at number nine is Despicable Me 4 ($1.8 million -56%).
This brings us to Brandy Norwood and her new horror movie The Front Room which entered on the bottom floor. With only a $1.6 million take, it is one of the worst opening weekends for a movie this year.
Horror movies are great fillers for big studios since they are so cheap to make and regain their budgets and then some without actually having to be good. Of course, fans appreciate when they are good but even then they’d rather wait for streaming instead of the multiplex. There is always an exception like Longlegs, but that was mostly due to its marketing team which did a stellar job building hype.
But fans are starting to see the man behind the curtain, namely Jason Blum and his Blumhouse brand which funds horror movies on a budget taking advantage of the market with great trailers and posters, but failing to deliver on the final product. It’s a shame because this strategy can harm independent films that are actually good. For instance, Strange Darling and Cuckoo have been lauded by fans, but their chances at box office riches are doomed under the weight of the perpetual bait-and-switch evidenced by movies such as Blumhouse’s AfrAId.
It’s not to say that The Front Room (A24) is bad, but audiences gave it a CinemaScore of C-, not exactly a stamp of approval.
Still to come this year are Nosferatu, Smile 2, and Salem’s Lot (straight to streaming). However, the real frontrunner is going to be Terrifier 3 which has managed to not only do incredibly well profit-wise in the past but remain faithful to fans who don’t necessarily need something fancy; they just want something honest.