It earned another $7.9 million on Wednesday, down a comparatively modest 31% from its blow-out $11.4m Tuesday gross. That Tuesday, by the way, was the second-biggest single Tuesday for an R-rated horror movie ever behind only The Omen 666, which actually opened on Tuesday, June 6, 2006 (6/6/06) and made $12m on its opening day. This $7.9m Wednesday is the biggest Wednesday in September history and the biggest Wednesday for an R-rated horror movie. And that brings the $35m Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. and New Line Cinema release's six-day domestic total to $151.5m.
As noted yesterday, it should end its first full week with over/under $160 million, so it's now merely a question of how hard it drops this weekend. I know how insane it is to argue that an R-rated horror movie has a shot at $300m domestic, but thus far it's still playing in the big leagues in terms of day-to-day grosses. Its six-day total is right between Harry Potter and the Order the Phoenix ($150m) and Iron Man 2 ($153m), and those films earned just over/under $300m domestic by the time they wrapped up.
With the exception of the Twilight Saga movies and the Harry Potter sequels (aside from Deathly Hallows part II), the movies that got past $150m in six days or less all had a pretty easy time getting over $300 million. And since general audiences seem to like the movie and the media narrative is uber-positive, we probably won't see a Matrix Reloaded-ish crash after that boffo opening, nor will we see what we saw with the later Twilight or Harry Potter films which played exclusively to their fanbase and then sank like a stone.
Nonetheless, a $55 million second weekend (-55%) still gets the movie over $215m domestic by Sunday, making it the second-biggest R-rated horror movie behind The Exorcist in just ten days. Heck, it'll be over Hannibal ($165m in 2001) tomorrow and Get Out ($175m this year) on Saturday. There has been a lot of talk about how 2017 has been so huge for horror, and that's correct. But more importantly, 2017 has been huge for movies that didn't require an overseas rescue to be huge.
To wit, Baby Driver, Get Out, Hidden Figures, Split, Annabelle: Creation, La La Land, Wonder Woman, Fifty Shades Darker, Girls Trip and John Wick: Chapter 2 were all big and buzzy hits that earned their keep entirely within the confines of domestic box office. Yes, they all relatively scored overseas as well (La La Land made $414 million worldwide and Moonlight made more overseas than in North America), but the overseas bounties were almost gravy for many of the year's big hits.
Sure, Fate of the Furious and Kong: Skull Island needed overseas bounties to be mega hits, but Beauty and the Beast earned $504 million in North America alone. And there were plenty of big movies like Logan and Dunkirk that needed just a little pick-me-up outside of North America which made their huge overseas grosses into major success stories. What we also saw were would-be event movies like Baywatch, Transformers: The Last Knight, The Mummy, War for the Planet of the Apes and Cars 3 which depended on overseas windfalls that didn't quite happen. Or, they bombed so badly in North America than even a halfway decent overseas gross wasn't enough to save them.
There are exceptions here and there, but generally, the very big movies that do best overseas are also the ones that do well in North America as well. So those reverse-engineering their blockbusters for China or Russia or anywhere else other than Hollywood might be doing it backward. Disney's Star Wars movies didn't need overseas grosses to be huge hits any more than Wolf Warrior 2 gave a damn how it played outside of China. And It, which was specifically targeted at American horror fans and those in tune with 1980's nostalgia, would be a monster smash even if it didn't play anywhere outside of North America.
