Horror At the Box Office: The Monkey Swings to Third Place in 2nd Weekend
More Monkey Business
In a ho hum weekend for the box office, when the highest-grossing film, Captain America: Brave New World, made only a tepid $15 million, The Monkey captured another $6.3 million, placing it third for the weekend and putting it near $25 million total domestically.
That’s a 55% decline from the first weekend, which is in the normal range for a horror movie. The Monkey isn’t a breakout hit like Longlegs, but it’s still on track to be a profitable venture for Neon.
Honestly, this is going to be a short post because there isn’t a whole lot going on right now in terms of horror movies in theaters. Heart Eyes did manage to stay in the top ten again, which surprised me, since Valentine’s Day is a couple weeks in the rearview mirror at this point.
It earned another $1.3 million, good enough for a seventh place finish. This is a reasonable 51% drop from the previous weekend. The holiday slasher has now grossed about $29 million total.
Horror’s First Big Hit of 2025?
With respectable, but unspectacular, performances by Companion, Presence, Heart Eyes, and The Monkey, horror is off to a decent start this year. All are likely on their way to making a profit, if they haven’t already. Certainly none of them are flops, although horror has had one big commercial dud already this year (The Wolfman).
But when will the first breakthrough hit of the year arrive? 2024 had Longlegs, Terrifier 3, and Nosferatu. So far, 2025 doesn’t have anything that has approached that level of success.
Could it be Death of a Unicorn? It’s hard to quantify this stuff, but my sense is that there’s a significant amount of buzz around it. That includes this website, where my reaction to the trailer is currently one of my most viewed posts.
Is there a major appetite for watching a badass unicorn beat the hell out of people? Or is it the Jenna Ortega factor? People just can’t get enough of her!
In any case, Death of a Unicorn releases on March 28th. I will have my reaction to the movie’s brand new second trailer up soon!
Credit to Box Office Mojo for the figures.
