Horror movie Don’t Breathe has scared off Suicide Squad from the top of the North American box office rankings.
Advertisement
The movie, from Sony’s Screen Gems and Stage 6 Films, is sure to be profitable for the studio, considering it cost $10 million to make. The $9.8 million flick is the latest financial success for Uruguay-born writer-director Fede Alvarez, best known for 2013’s “Evil Dead” remake. Moviegoers gave the picture an overall B-plus CinemaScore (A-minus from the under 35 crowd) while 87 percent of Rotten Tomatoes critics rated the film positively. It also continues Sony’s summer of success with original films that cost very little to make.
“Don’t Breathe” benefited from one of the biggest, most aggressive digital marketing campaigns in Sony’s history, following recently successful digital-skewing campaigns for “Sausage Party” and “The Shallows”.
“As it turns out horror is the least scary genre this summer, especially to the bean counters in Hollywood”, said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for box office tracker comScore. “[They] can nearly always be counted on to make money”. After finishing in first for three consecutive weekends, the super-villain mash-up had to settle for second place this weekend with about $12.1 million at 3,582 locations. The DC antihero mashup, after receiving relatively poor reviews, has taken in $282.9 million domestically.
Despite poor reviews, the film just hit $600 million worldwide, along with a receiving a lot of support from its fans. While a superhero movie usually claims the number one spot during its opening weekend, history has shown how the forthcoming weeks can have drastically different outcomes for the genre.
With September marking the start of the fall movie season and quest for Oscar gold, the weekend upcoming sees the release of The Light Between Oceans, starring Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander and based on the best-selling novel. But although it and Sausage Party have surged as late summer surprise hits, full on blockbusters are on a hibernation until the fall. It is expected that Don’t Breathe will close out its stay in movie theaters between 55 and 65 million dollars.
Note: Numbers include Sunday estimates and are three-day estimates.
With a title like Mechanic: Resurrection you might expect the sequel to serve as a resurgence for the franchise, but this weekend it proved to be more of a nail in the coffin. But they both finished outside of the top 10 and below the expanding Hell or High Water, which grossed $3.7 million in going up to 909 theaters. Dark comedy War Dogs dropped about 50% in its second week for the seventh spot. Family-friendly movies like Finding Dory and The Secret Life of Pets have brought in the crowds as well, but that’s normal for the school-free summer months.
Advertisement
As for the rest of the top 10, Jason Bourne and Bad Moms continued their top 10 runs for a fifth week.
