2020 has spit out a number of horror misfires, so far, and most of these titles won’t be remembered come June: Fantasy Island, The Grudge, The Turning, Gretel and Hansel and Brahms: The Boy II. Elizabeth Moss, producer Jason Blumhouse, and writer/director Leigh Whannell, however, have finally delivered the first huge horror hit of 2020 with Invisible Man. The pic from Universal earned a whopping $28.9 million this weekend on only $7 million price tag, so it is already well into profitability. It also added $20 million overseas to bring its opening weekend total to around $50 million globally.
For comparison’s sake, remember when Universal attempted to launch the Dark Trilogy beginning with Tom Cruise’s The Mummy? That movie earned $2 million more than Invisible Man in its opening weekend, but cost around $150 million more to produce.
Invisible Man is also playing more like a thriller than horror movie, meaning it is not completely front-loaded. With a B+ Cinemascore (very good for a horror film) and very good reviews (90 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), it has a chance to play like a Split or an Us over the coming weeks, and like the latter, combines big scares with pressing social commentary. It should have a couple of weeks of runway as before The Hunt comes out in two weeks and the A Quiet Place sequel arrives on March 20th.
Sony Pictures TV/Funimation’s My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising, a Japanese anime superhero film based on a popular manga series, also opened this weekend, taking fourth place with an impressive $6.2 million over three days and $9.5 million since it opened on Wednesday. I haven’t been this surprised about a movie I’ve never heard of breaking into the top 10 probably since the last time an anime film unexpectedly broke into the top ten. Likewise, Impractical Jokers — another movie with little promotion, based on the popular TruTV series — expanded from 357 theaters to 1,820 theaters and earned another $2.8 million to bring its two-week total to $5.9 million.
Everything else this weekend was a holdover, Sonic the Hedgehog continues to crush it, earning another $16 million in its third weekend to bring its total to $128 million. It’s earned about the same amount overseas, all on an $85 million budget, so there will almost certainly be a sequel. Call of the Wild earned $12.8 million to bring its ten-day total to $48 million, which would be great if the budget for the film were a modest $60 million. Instead, 20th Century inexplicably spent $125 million on it, so $48 million puts it solidly in the red.
With $4.3 million, Bad Boys For Life has now earned $197 million and is poised to cross the $200 million mark this week. Birds Of Prey is fading much faster than DC had hoped, earning $3.9 million in its fourth weekend to bring its total to $78.5 million. For comparison’s sake, Green Lantern earned $109 million after four weeks. Ooof. Brahms: Boy 2 earned $2.63 million in its second weekend to bring its total to $9.7 million, which isn’t great but for the fact that STX Films only invested $2.5 million in the Katie Holmes horror flick.
Now that Knives Out and Jumanji: Next Level have finally vacated the top 10, 1917 has the distinction of being the longest-running film in the top 10. In its 10th week, it earned $2.5 million to brings its total to $155 million. Finally, Fantasy Island clings to the bottom rung of the top ten with $2.2 million and $23.9 million overall, but like The Invisible Man, it also only cost $7 million to produce. And that’s the genius of Jason Blumberg: Even its underperformers turn a profit, while movies like Invisible Man can pay for a whole slate of horror flicks for a year.
Source: Box Office Mojo, Deadline
