Horror at the Box Office: Another Blah Weekend
Faces of Death was the highest-grossing horror movie last weekend, but that wasn’t much to brag about. It grossed about $1.7 million and finished in eighth place.
According to Deadline, this is a respectable showing for a niche film like this, but when the top-earning movie made less than $2 million, you know it was a slow weekend for the genre. I guess this answers the question of whether there was a large appetite for another Faces of Death film.
Faces was the only major new horror release. The holdovers were led by Ready or Not 2, which finished 11th and has grossed a domestic total of about $22 million. It’s earned $38 million worldwide against a $14 million budget.
This is a reasonably good performance, but profit-wise it pales in comparison to the original, which grossed $57 million globally on a $6 million budget. Will a modest profit be enough of an incentive to make a third installment?
They Will Kill You sank 74% to an estimated $520K for a total of about $10.4 million and $18 million worldwide. That landed it in 14th place. It’s been a disappointing run for the $20 million budget film. A crowded marketplace and mediocre reviews led to this one fizzling quickly.
Scream 7 squeezed a few more bucks out of the few remaining theaters that are still showing it, finishing 15th. It earned $470K and increased its domestic haul to over $121 million.
Undertone also raked in additional profits, grossing an estimated $136K to put its total gross at nearly $20 million. This $500K budget movie is an underrated success story in horror this year.
Up Next
Can horror escape the doldrums next week? Maybe. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy shuffles into theaters on Friday. This movie is the latest attempt to revive the Universal Mummy franchise. I’ve never been a big fan of this series, but there’s been positive early buzz.
Reviewers have called the movie shocking, creepy, and far different from the mainstream action flick Mummy movies of the recent past. Hopefully it will be more like The Invisible Man (2020) and less like Wolf Man (2025).
Credit to Box Office Mojo for the figures cited.
