Box Office Discussion: It's a "Scream"

 Scream VI slaughters its competition, while 65 gets 86ed and Champions proves to be a loser.

It's been a good year for horror movies.  While not all scary films have done well (Firestarter, we hardly knew ye), at least six of them have done at least $50 million domestic since the start of 2022.  Joining the group sometime this week will be Scream VI, which slashed its way to a franchise-best $44.5 million opening.  

The newest installment in the venerable franchise sees the survivors of the previous film (except for Neve Campbell, who, like Sylvester Stallone, has opted to drop out of the most recent installment of her decades-long series) head to New York, where yet another psycho in yet another Ghostface costume proceeds to murder a good chunk of the cast.  With this opening, not only is Scream VII very likely (coming Summer 2024?), but this is likely to be the first installment since the second one to hit the $100 million mark domestically.  Indeed, if this can get past the first film's $103.1 million, this will become the highest grosser of the franchise (usual disclaimer about how $103.1 million in 1996 is a lot more than the same total in 2023).

Last week's champ, Creed III, itself a member of a very-long-running franchise (20 years longer than Scream), held up decently, taking in $27.3 million in its second weekend, for a ten-day total of $101.4 million, the second film of 2023 to pass the century mark.  Given that the Creed II topped out at $115.7 million, this will certainly become the highest-grossing Creed movie, and it stands on pace to pass Rocky IV to become the highest grosser of the overall franchise (see disclaimer above).

Simply sticking dinosaurs into your action movie is no guarantee of Jurassic Park-style grosses, as the producers of 65 found out this weekend.  The Adam Driver vehicle, in which he plays an astronaut stranded on prehistoric Earth, could only mount a $12.3 million opening, despite running an ad during the Super Bowl last month.  This one could easily finish below $30 million, which would mean it would need a huge overseas gross to have any hope of breaking even (even if the film only cost $45 million, as some reports suggest).  In other words, don't hold your breath for 66.

Somehow becoming simultaneously the year's biggest hit and the year's biggest disappointment, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania continues to see its box office shrink, falling to $7.1 million, to $198.1 million.  It will be the first 2023 film to pass the $200 million this week.  While there are several upcoming films that could take the year's top spot, there's a solid chance that Ant-Man might be #1 for the year until mid-May, when stablemate Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 passes it.

It's a sign of how much of a budding cult hit that Cocaine Bear is becoming that the bear made a couple of well-received appearances at the Oscars on Sunday, which is fair since it is highly unlikely to be invited to the Oscars next year.  That said, the film continues to perform quite well, snorting up $6.3 million for a gross of $51.7 million.  Assuming you don't count the Jurassic World movies, this is easily the biggest hit in the psycho animal genre since The Meg back in 2018.

Fouling out immediately is Champions, the heartwarming comedy-drama starring Woody Harrelson as the reluctant coach of a basketball team of players with intellectual disabilities.  Audiences, who have seen this type of movie many, many, many, many times before, only spent $5.2 million on it.  Expect this one to finish somewhere between $10 and $15 million.

It may not be heaven-sent, but Jesus Revolution continues to do solid business, taking in another $5.1 million for a gross of $39.4 million.  It should pass 2019's Breakthrough this week to become the highest-grossing Christian movie since director Jon Erwin's own I Can Only Imagine in 2018.

Two long-running hits that opened way back at Christmas, Avatar: The Way of Water and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, both look on the verge of finally finishing their theatrical runs.  Avatar took in $2.7 million for a gross of $674.7 million, while Boots conjured up $1.8 million for a gross of $179.7 million.

Rounding out the Top 10 is the flop spy spoof Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre.  The latest from director Guy Ritchie only made $1.3 million for a ten-day total of $5.6 million.  

Even though the film continues to play in theaters nationwide, Crunchyroll did not provide second-weekend numbers for Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba-To the Swordsmith Village.  If it follows a similar pattern to other theatrical spinoffs of anime titles, it is likely to have finished in the lower reaches of this week's Top Ten.

Outside the Top 10, Everything Everywhere All At Once had another pre-Oscar surge, as the gross for the film stands at $73.8 million.  This makes it the highest-grossing Best Picture winner since Green Book.  We'll see how the film does this coming weekend, as it celebrates both its Oscar win and its first anniversary of its opening.

It's a bit odd to announce a complete reboot of your entire franchise when there are still three major movies in the pipeline, but that's what happened to the DC Cinematic Universe.  We'll see how that announcement plays with the release of this week's only wide opening, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, a sequel to the minor 2019 superhero hit that sort of got lost between the releases of Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame.  Returning as the title character is Zachary Levi, who, appropriately enough, is wondering about his place in the wide world of superheroes, just as some vengeful gods (including Helen Mirren and Lucy Liu) show up hoping to reclaim their powers.  This one seems highly likely to dislodge Scream from the top spot, so the big question is will it open better or worse than the $53.5 million the first one opened at four years ago.  We'll find out next week.