This January was fruitful for genre fans, only not so much for the distributors. In addition to being blessed with 20th Century’s Underwater, we horror fans followed the bread crumbs to Gretel & Hansel (read Meagan’s review), the Osgood Perkins-directed Grimm fairytale adaptation that failed to cook up a strong opening weekend for Orion Pictures.
The A24-lite arthouse horror film starring Sophia Lillis crumbled with an estimated $6.05M domestic opening, which isn’t great, but it’s all about perspective. Unlike films like Underwater, which cost $60m-$80M just to produce, Gretel & Hansel has a reported budget of only $5M, which means low risk, high reward for Orion.
With a $6M opening, the dark fairytale is looking at a lifetime $15M domestic, with a potential worldwide take of $20-25M, which is enough for breakeven, maybe even some profit. This is also not taking into account any pre-sold territories – it’s highly likely that Orion broke even on its production budget before even released (this is also the case with many lower-budget movies, but we don’t talk about it). The long and short of it is that Orion did just fine here, just presumably not enough to warrant a sequel.
With all that said, the lower budget allowed Orion to take a risk on something that wasn’t likely to crack mainstream, and we applaud that here at Bloody Disgusting.
Gretel & Hansel is directed by one of Bloody Disgusting’s favorite up-and-coming filmmakers, Osgood Perkins, the son of the great Anthony Perkins (Psycho) who helmed the astounding A24 thriller The Blackcoat’s Daughter and Netflix’s chilling I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House.
Crippled by poor word of mouth that resulted in the second “F” CinemaScore this January, The Turning (review), Universal’s 90’s take on “The Turn of the Screw”, took in another $3M domestic, putting it at $11.7M through its first two weekends.
With a budget between $10M-$14M, it doesn’t need a whole lot to break even, but the troubled production’s weak international numbers are going to take its toll. We’ll keep watching out of sheer curiosity.
In the film, a young woman (Mackenzie Davis) hired as the nanny to two orphans is convinced that the country mansion they live in is haunted. Finn Wolfhard and Brooklynn Prince play the young orphans who look to be part of the torment inflicted on their new nanny.
And as I wrote last week in regards to The Grudge (review), negative reviews and its “F” CinemaScore grade weren’t enough to keep this Sam Raimi-produced, R-rated haunter from making back its money, plus some. The new Grudge, directed by Nicolas Pesce, has a reported budget of $10M, which means it needed to see around $30M worldwide before it could be declared a success. It’s currently sitting at $40M globally with more to come.
The Nicolas Pesce-directed film follows a detective (Andrea Riseborough) who investigates a serious of suspicious deaths all stemming from one house. Once she enters, the curse latches onto her and won’t let go.
