With September officially here, so comes with it the talk of Halloween. This is the time of year all of the press come out of the woodwork and pretend to be huge horror fans, boasting about our beloved genre as if they live it day in and day out like we do. With New Line Cinema’s IT positioned to explode at the box office next weekend, Pennywise will soon be the toast of the town, with clowns dominating the conversation around water coolers through most of the month.

IT will most likely overshadow another huge horror event that’s been in the works for months now; two other horror films are battling out for the honor of “most profitable horror film of the year.” Many press outlets were quick to anoint Jordan Peele‘s Get Out as the champion and put a crown on the low-budget Universal/Blumhouse production. The film absolutely dominated the box office, pulling in $252,434,250  worldwide. It was a tremendous success for both Universal and us horror fans. It proves horror is not only profitable but it’s alive and well, and every studio should be working to make their own genre blockbuster.

Thankfully, New Line Cinema has been paying attention. While they’re poised to win the year with their expensive adaptation of Stephen King’s IT, they’ve also been incredibly active in crafting their low-budget Conjuring universe that was created by the great James Wan. We’ve been reporting for weeks now (to protest and objection) that David F. Sandberg‘s Annabelle: Creation was going to steal the crown from Get Out.

Well, the time has come to crown the new king as Annabelle: Creation has just surpassed Get Out with a worldwide gross of $253,375,598.

Even though Get Out‘s budget was only $5 million, Annabelle: Creation‘s was a mere $15 million. That $10 million may seem substantial in a single breath but when you’re talking about $250 million worldwide it’s microscopic. Also, Get Out did much better here in the States, while Creation was heavily international. This isn’t fine-tooth comb reporting as we don’t know the exact breakdown, but Creation is still in theaters here in the States, and could potentially pull in another $10 million. It’s also continuing to roll through the worldwide box office and will pull tens of millions more. New Line Cinema’s Conjuring spinoff has quietly become the most profitable horror film of the year.

As a horror fan, the only thing that really matters is that our genre is hot as ever. While the box office stories dominating the press this morning are about how awful this summer was for the studios, we’re talking about two phenomenal horror films making $250 million in the box office all the while New Line’s two-headed monster is only a week out. We’re putting the studios on notice: big or small budget, it doesn’t matter – if you make a good horror movie, the world is going to show up. It’s time for the studios to step up and start supporting our genre instead of treating it like it’s some sort of burden not worthy of their time and energy.