Horror at the Box Office: 28 Years Later Floats, M3gan Flounders
In a weekend dominated by the latest installment of the horror adjacent Jurassic Park franchise, the two most recent genre releases continued on their previous trajectories, finishing in the middle of the top ten.
Jurassic Park: Rebirth easily stomped the competition with a $91 million opening weekend, proving that dinosaurs are still a major summer movie season draw. A decent argument can be made that the original Jurassic Park is a horror movie, but the series has long since shifted to the action genre.
Unlike M3gan, it has managed to do this successfully – at least in terms of commercial performance. Anyway, Rebirth is not a horror film, so let’s move on.
28 Years Later landed in fifth place, its third consecutive weekend in the top five. The threequel grossed $4.6 million, a respectable 52% drop from week 2, putting its total at $60 million domestically and $125 million worldwide. Another solid result for the $60 million budgeted film.
Right behind it in sixth place was M3gan 2.0, which fell 62% and grossed $3.8 million. It’s grossed about $18.5 million in North America and $30 million worldwide.
There’s no sugarcoating it – this is a massive disappointment. The first M3gan grossed over $180 million. The sequel will finish with maybe a quarter of that. Even Blumhouse president Jason Blum has admitted the movie is a failure, stating that they “classically over-thought how powerful people’s engagement was with her (M3gan).”
I have to give credit to Blum – few executives would have the guts to publicly make such a frank statement, especially so soon after a movie’s release. The $25 million budget (not including marketing) sequel could make a small profit eventually, but its massive underperformance has put the future of the franchise in question.
Meanwhile, Blumhouse finds itself in in a similar position to A24. They’re a usually successful horror studio that’s currently in a deep commercial slump. Blumhouse also produced that awful Wolf Man movie that deservedly flopped last winter, as well as earning mediocre grosses from The Woman in the Yard and Drop.
They’re hoping to bounce back with The Black Phone 2 and Five Nights at Freddy’s 2. Both are sequels to massive hits (although I hated the first Five Nights at Freddy’s movie), so hopefully they’ll come through for the studio.
Looking Ahead
This month is a bit of a dry spell for new horror content. Next weekend doesn’t offer any major new titles. Everyone wanted to avoid competing with the dino theme park movie’s second weekend. I Know What You Did Last Summer hits theaters on July 18th.
Credit to Box Office Mojo for the figures cited.
