Horror at the Box Office: ‘Conjuring’ Remains Highest Grossing Genre Film
The Conjuring: Last Rites continued its impressive box office run, dropping 40% from its previous weekend and grossing about $4 million. This earned the fifth place spot, the highest of any horror movie this week. Last Rites has grossed about $168 million domestically, the highest total of the franchise.
The Strangers Chapter 2 was the second highest-grossing horror flick with $2.8 million, a 52% decline from its first weekend. That landed it in eighth place. Chapter 2‘s total stands at about $10.7 million. It cost $8.5 million to produce. This performance will probably be decent enough to justify another installment.
Barking behind it in ninth place was the new dog horror movie Good Boy. The indy film grossed approximately $2.2 million in its opening weekend. Budget info isn’t publicly available, but the director used his own dog and home for the movie, so it probably didn’t cost much.
According to this analysis by Deadline, this is a strong opening for a film of this type. It’ll be interesting to see if Good Boy shows staying power and if it has series potential.
The Long Walk ran up another $1.7 million this weekend, upping its cume to just under $32 million. That’s a respectable decline of 49% from last weekend. Positive buzz has helped this movie have decent staying power. It’s earned $44 million worldwide on a budget of $20 million.
Bone Lake landed outside the top ten, finishing in 13th place with $828,560. It played in far fewer theaters than the horror movies ranked above it, but it’s hard to imagine the studio is pleased with this result. Reviews have been positive, but too much competition is hurting this film.
The horror marketplace is splintered right now, with a large number of genre films competing against each other. It’s going to be challenging for any of them to become a breakout hit.
Up Next
Next weekend is surprisingly quiet when it comes to new horror films. However, The Black Phone 2 hits theaters on October 17th. It stands a good chance of being October’s highest-grossing horror movie.
Credit to Box Office Mojo for the figures cited.
