Movies
A24’s ‘Talk to Me’ Approaching $40 Million at the Box Office After Incredible Third Weekend
Acquired out of Sundance by A24, the low budget horror movie Talk to Me has proven to be a massive success for the company, with a sequel – Talk 2 Me – already ordered up last week.
How much has Talk to Me made at the box office so far? Thanks to strong word of mouth, the film’s third weekend was damn near as profitable as its second weekend of release!
The film added $5.1 million to its domestic total between this past Friday and this past Sunday, which isn’t that far off from the $6.3 million it made in that frame the previous week.
To date, Talk to Me has now scared up $31.3 million here in the United States since the week of July 28, with the film’s worldwide total currently sitting at $36.5 million.
As Slash Film notes, Talk to Me now has the second highest domestic gross for an A24 horror movie, behind the $44 million made by Ari Aster’s Hereditary. Worldwide, the 2018 movie ended its run with $82.8 million, so Talk to Me still has a lot of catching up to do.
Directed by brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, Talk to Me was made on a reported production budget of just $4.5 million, which the movie was able to earn back in its first day of release. Important to note, however, that A24 acquired the film out of Sundance for a reported “high seven figures,” a risk that has now proven to be a smart one for the company to take.
The brutal terror of Talk to Me unfolds when “a group of friends discover how to conjure spirits using an embalmed hand; they become hooked on the new thrill until one of them goes too far and unleashes terrifying supernatural forces.” Sophia Wilde, Miranda Otto, Alexandra Jensen, Joe Bird, Otis Djanji, and Zoe Terakes star in the A24 horror hit.
In her Sundance review for BD, Meagan Navarro wrote, “Talk to Me delivers an intense, nightmarish horror movie that’ll leave you breathless.” Her review continued, “There’s a refreshing ruthlessness to this cautionary tale that plays like a surge of adrenaline; it makes for one hell of an introduction to Danny and Michael Philippou’s brand of horror.”
Before updating the video nasty Faces of Death, director Daniel Goldhaber and writer Isa Mazzei explored the dangers of online life in tech-thriller Cam, their feature debut that was acquired by Netflix in 2018 after making waves on the festival circuit.
At the end of last year, the Netflix exclusive quietly departed from the streaming platform, left without another streaming home.
It’s not an isolated story; Mike Flanagan’s Hush also left streaming entirely for a period until it was finally picked up on both physical media and other streaming services.
While the tech-thriller currently isn’t available to watch on Netflix, Tubi, Hulu, or any other platforms, that’s not a problem for Cam thanks to a very cool move by Goldhaber: the director has made his breakout film accessible to watch online for free via his website.
As his site notes: “CAM is unfortunately not currently available to view on any platforms, so you can watch it here if you like :).“
No subscriptions or fees necessary, just hit play.
Cam follows Alice (Madeline Brewer), who works as an online cam girl obsessed with her ranking on the cam site. The higher her ranking goes, the more it draws unwanted attention, and Alice soon finds herself replaced on her own show with a doppelganger.
Written by Mazzei, a former camgirl, it uses the horror thriller premise to examine the life of a sex worker; Alice’s career ambition is directly at odds with the shame it brings to her family, and how she tries to spare them from it by keeping them in the dark. It only compounds her danger when the doppelganger enters the equation in Goldhaber’s engaging thriller.
For a deep dive into the treacherous world of Cam, listen to Horror Queers’ episode on it now.
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