Movies
‘Happy Death Day’ Revives Slasher Cinema With Surprise $26.5 Million Weekend
Made on a reported budget of just $4.8 million, Blumhouse has another hugely profitable hit on their hands with director Christopher Landon’s Happy Death Day, which pulled in an incredibly impressive $26.5 million at the domestic box office this weekend. The film is now #1 at the box office, overtaking last weekend’s Blade Runner 2049.
Yes, an original slasher film is at the top of the box office charts… in 2017.
How cool is that?!
Happy Death Day was also rolled out internationally this weekend, grossing $5 million in 11 markets; it made $2 million in Brazil and $1.1 million in Australia.
Needless to say, 2017 has been a HUGE year for horror at the box office, with Happy Death Day coming along in the wake of smash hit successes such as Split, Get Out, Annabelle: Creation and IT. Speaking of Annabelle: Creation, that film just surpassed an incredible $300 million (worldwide) this weekend.
Described as “Groundhog Day meets Scream,” Happy Death Day surely benefited from being released so close to Halloween, not to mention on a Friday the 13th weekend. Of course, the PG-13 rating also helped a great deal, ensuring that younger audiences would be piling into the theater for some pre-Halloween frights this weekend.
Hooray for Blumhouse. Hooray for horror. And hooray for slasher movies!
In Happy Death Day, “Tree Gelbman wakes up again and again on the same day – her birthday – only to be murdered and restart the process until she finds out who killed her.”
In addition to Leigh Whannell’s upcoming Universal Monsters movie Wolf Man, Julia Garner (The Royal Hotel) has also joined the cast of Weapons, THR has announced tonight.
Weapons is the new horror movie from New Line Cinema and director Zach Cregger (Barbarian), with Julia Garner joining the previously announced Josh Brolin (Dune 2).
The upcoming Weapons is from writer/director Zach Cregger, who will also produce alongside his Barbarian producing team: Roy Lee of Vertigo and J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules of BoulderLight Pictures. Vertigo’s Miri Yoon also produces.
The Hollywood Reporter teases, “Plot details for Weapons are being kept holstered but it is described as a multi and inter-related story horror epic that tonally is in the vein of Magnolia, the 1999 actor-crammed showcase from filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson.”
Cregger was a founding member and writer for the New York comedy troupe “The Whitest Kids U’Know,” which he started while attending The School of Visual Arts. The award-winning group’s self-titled sketch comedy show ran for five seasons on IFC-TV and Fuse. He was also a series regular on Jimmy Fallon’s NBC series “Guys with Kids” and the TBS hit series “Wrecked,” and was featured in a recurring role on the NBC series “About a Boy.”
Weapons will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures.
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