If all goes well, Scott Derrickson’s sequel Black Phone 2 will mark a turnaround for Blumhouse after a scary string of box office misses, culminating with the pricey flop of M3GAN 2.0 earlier this year in what was both a professional and personal blow for horror maestro Jason Blum.
All signs are looking good. Black Phone 2 easily topped the Friday box office with an official opening day gross of $10.8 million, including $2.6 million in Thursday previews. That puts the movie on course to earn an estimated $24.4 million from 3,411 theaters, per Universal and Blumhouse. Rival studios think it has a chance of hitting $26 million; either way, it will dial in a first-place finish after scoring promising reviews and strong audience exits, including a B CinemaScore (that’s a great grade for the horror genre).
Heading into the weekend, Universal had the movie’s debut at $18 million, but prerelease tracking is turning out to be right in predicting that the R-rated sequel would come in ahead of the first film.
Opening in 2021 when cinemas were first recovering from COVID — Black Phone started off with $23.6 million in North America on its way to turning into a sleeper hit, amassing more than $161 million in worldwide ticket sales (that, however, was before horror fatigue struck at the box office).
Black Phone 2 returns Ethan Hawke as the serial killer known as Grabber. The sequel has been embraced by many critics, including The Hollywood Reporter‘s Frank Scheck. “Fortunately, this follow-up arriving four years later is no mere cash grab, but rather an even more stylistically and thematically ambitious effort that mostly succeeds in its aspirations,” he writes.
Latinos are the leading demo so far, according to exit polling service PostTrak.
Costing a relatively inexpensive $30 million to produce, the Blumhouse and Universal will have no trouble releasing toppling Disney holdover Tron: Ares, which grossed $3 million Friday from 4,000 for a projected $11 million second weekend. The tentpole has been a disappointment so far and is looking at a steep decline of 65 percent in its sophomore outing.
Lionsgate’s Aziz Ansari-directed comedy Good Fortune is also launching nationwide this weekend, but isn’t finding much gold. The $30 million film took in $2.4 million Friday from 2,990 locations, including $725,000 in previews, for a third-place finish and an estimated $6 million opening. That’s on the low end of expectations despite its star-packed cast and a B+ CinemaScore.
Starring Seth Rogen, Ansari, Keke Palmer, with Sandra Oh, and Keanu Reeves, Good Fortune stars Reeves as a scruffy guardian angel assigned to save someone’s soul.
Good Fortune has boasted an even better critics’ score than Black Phone 2, with THR‘s review noting that “thanks to the engaging ensemble and the breezily improvised feel to many of its funnier line readings, Good Fortune coasts along agreeably on all those good intentions.”
Duking it out for fourth place are Warner Bros.’ One Battle After Another and Paramount’s Roofman, which both look to earn in the $3.7 million range. Some show Roofman coming in fourth, while Paramount is reporting a fifth-place finish for its Channing Tatum comedy, even if by a narrow margin.
This story was originally published Oct. 17 at 10:20 a.m.
