Insidious: The Red Door shows once again that horror is a near-sure bet, while the controversial Sound of Freedom prompted the sound of cash registers.
In Hollywood, as one formerly dependable genre after another suddenly finds itself struggling at the box office, the last near-guaranteed type of film is horror. Of this year's Top 25 titles so far, six of them (Scream VI, M3GAN, Evil Dead Rise, Cocaine Bear, The Boogeyman, Knock at the Cabin) are horror flicks. Not every one is a hit (Renfield, we hardly knew ye), and there's usually a limit into what they bring in (Scream VI, the highest grosser of the bunch, topped out at $108.2 million), but they're usually cheap enough that if they do flop, not much money is lost, and they're far more likely to be a profitable hit than a comedy or non-franchise action movie would be.
The latest horror film to demonstrate the genre's power is Insidious: The Red Door. The fifth film in a franchise that has been dormant since 2018's Insidious: The Last Key, this one returned the leads from the first two, Patrick Wilson (who directed this installment), Rose Byrne, and Ty Simpkins, to the lead roles (the three had made cameos in The Last Key). Audiences responded, as the film opened to $33 million, the second best opening of the series behind 2013's Insidious: Chapter 2. While this franchise has never been as big as Wilson's other horror series, The Conjuring, The Red Door has already grossed more than twice its production budget, and has a shot at becoming the first entry to pass $100 million.
Insidious's success knocked last week's champ, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, down to second. The action extravaganza, with a production budget 20 times that of Insidious, is reminding me of the last time Disney tried to revive a long-dormant franchise. Back in December 2018, Mary Poppins Returns arrived on a wave of hype, and Disney clearly expected it to do $300 million domestic easily. It did barely half that. Disney had hopes that Indy would be the summer's top film, but it could only whip up $27.4 million for a ten-day total of $122.1 million. It seems likely to hit at least $200 million, but there's also the real possibility that it ends up the lowest-grossing of the series, looking up at Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom's $179.9 million (an amount made in 1984 dollars. Adjusted for inflation, that's about $500 million today). At the very least, however, Harrison Ford is now officially the first actor to star in a live-action $100 million grosser for six straight decades.
Likely to reign as the summer's biggest seemingly-out-of-nowhere smash, the supposedly true Sound of Freedom opened appropriately enough on the 4th of July, and promptly blew everyone's modest expectations out of the water. The thriller, starring Jim Caviezel as Tim Ballard, who has made it his life's work to break up child trafficking rings, was shot in 2018, and has been sitting on the shelf. Tiny Angel Studios (which had a minor surprise religious hit back in April with His Only Son) picked it up, and thanks to savvy marketing to conservative and evangelical groups, saw the film make $19.7 million over the weekend and $41.7 million since it opened last Tuesday. The fact it earned more over Tuesday-Thursday than Friday-Sunday suggests the film will be front-loaded, so Angel Studios is probably a long way from celebrating its first $100 million hit (and negative stories about the controversial, and possibly ineffective and dangerous tactics used by the real-life Ballard might limit crossover appeal), but just in terms of box office numbers, Freedom has launched a lot of fireworks.
Word-of-mouth hits used to be mostly smaller films. Now, they seem to be massive tentpoles that underperform on opening weekend but develop incredibly strong legs. That describes Elemental, which took in $10 million in its fourth weekend to bring its total to $109.6 million. At this point, it seems certain to pass both Lightyear and The Good Dinosaur, and with school not starting for at least a month, it has an outside chance of catching Cars 3, which stalled out at $153 million. Despite this, Elemental will still go down as one of the lowest-grossing Pixar titles, but at least it won't be regarded as an out-and-out flop.
The summer's other big animated title, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, celebrated the post-holiday weekend by swinging past Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 to become the summer's biggest film (for now). Spidey took in $8 million for a total of $357.7 million.
With Insidious and Sound of Freedom drawing most of the attention over the weekend, the most acclaimed film of the bunch, Joy Ride, more or less crashed on its opening. The raunchy R-rated comedy could only drive away with $5.8 million, despite near-unanimous good reviews. Ride has a chance to get some good word-of-mouth and develop some legs, but it seems most likely to have to wait for streaming to be discovered.
Speaking of raunchy R-rated comedies, Joy Ride barely beat the third weekend of No Hard Feelings, which earned $5.4 million for a total of $40.6 million. Feelings seems to be heading for a final gross of between $50 and $60 million.
Long-running Transformers: Rise of the Beasts took in $5.1 million for a total of $146.8 million, with hopes of hitting $160 million before the end of its run. Another long runner, or perhaps swimmer, The Little Mermaid, picked up $3.7 million for a total of $289.2 million and will try to pass $300 million before it heads under the Disney+ umbrella.
With Elemental and Spider-Man splitting the animation audience, there wasn't much left for Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken, which might be going down as the summer's biggest flop not involving a red-suited speedster. It could only pick up $2.9 million for a ten-day total of $11.7 million. At this point, it seems likely to struggle to pass even Spirt Untamed--currently the lowest-grossing DreamWorks Animation title ever--which ended its run at $17.7 million.
The weekend's one new wide title is already out in theaters, and it should be monstrous. Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part One is the seventh entry in the venerable action franchise, as Tom Cruise returns once again as Ethan Hunt, once again saving the world via outrageous stunts that Cruise performs himself. As successful as the franchise is, it has never been a huge opener (the record is the $61.2 million that Mission: Impossible-Fallout opened to in 2018), but that could change as predictions that this could open over $100 million abound. Opening on a Wednesday could dilute the actual weekend total, but will certainly add to the overall gross by Sunday night. No matter what, Reckoning will be #1 by a huge margin this weekend. How huge? We'll find out next week.
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