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.”
