Tis the spooky season and as such, Universal/Blumhouse’s Black Phone 2 will continue to roll calls to moviegoers with the Scott Derrickson directed and co-written sequel expected to pull in around $17.7M for a second No. 1 win this weekend, -55%.
Witness the power of horror now as New Line’s Conjuring: The Last Rites continues to hang around the top 10 in its seventh week, now with a 2x multiple ($175.7M off its franchise record $84M opening). Black Phone 2 made $3M yesterday on discount Tuesdays, which is $200k shy of the original 2022 movie’s first Tuesday. Five day running cume for the sequel is $32.5M, +9% of Black Phone over the same period; that movie ended its U.S./Canada run at $90.1M.
Black Phone 2 is benefitting from great word of mouth, and very good reviews, hence the momentum despite four wide entries aimed at varying demos arriving on the schedule: 20th Century Studios’ Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere ($9M-$11M) Paramount/Constantin’s Colleen Hoover feature take, Regretting You ($9M-$11M), Sony/Crunchyroll’s Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc and NEON’s psychological thriller Shelby Oaks ($2M+).
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The question is — does the new stuff overperform with their targeted audience?
Of the four, Chainsaw Man based on y Tatsuki Fujimoto‘s manga series looks to have the upper hand, attracting its 18-34 male fanbase, expected to do $11M-$14M at 3,000 sites. Remember, just because Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle busted through with a record anime opening of $70.6M, doesn’t mean that anime is all a sudden a mass-appealing genre. Each one of these IPs has a niche or uber attraction. This one is good, but not of Demon Slayer magnitude with the manga selling 31 million copies, a 2022 Tokyo TV produced anime series, and offshore box office already of $68.3M (63% of that coming from Japan). Further note, only eight anime movies have opened to north of $10 million at the domestic box office, hence that’s the barometer. Chainsaw Man follows Denji, a poor teen who makes a contract that fuses his body with that of Pochita, the dog-like Chainsaw Devil, granting him the power to transform parts of his body into chainsaws. He joins the Public Safety Devil Hunters, a government agency focused on battling Devils in Japan. Sony will have the majority of Imax and premium large format screens for the release. Previews start Thursday at 2,500 locations at 4PM. No Rotten Tomatoes score yet.
Regretting You, which cost Constantin $30M, and was acquired by Paramount, isn’t arriving with the crazy heat that the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni starring Hoover predecessor did, It Ends With Us, which powered to an amazing $50 million opening, some of that juiced by the very early days of the stars’ controversy. Women under 35 are the target at 3,300 theaters. Previews start Thursday at 6PM. Pic follows Morgan Grant (Allison Williams) and her daughter Clara (Mckenna Grace) as they explore what’s left behind after a devastating accident reveals a shocking betrayal and forces them to confront family secrets, redefine love, and rediscover each other. Dave Franco, Mason Thames, Scott Eastwood and Willa Fitzgerald also star in the PG-13 title. No RT score listed yet.
Which brings us to Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere. The Bear‘s Jeremy Allen White plays New Jersey’s son, and Jeremy Strong is his manager, Jon Landau as the former creates the most personal album of his career, Nebraska, before his 1985 Born in the U.S.A. global explosion. Knock on wood all the older male Springsteen fans come out for this one, projections not in the Rocketman ($25.7M) or even Bohemian Rhapsody ($51 million) realm of rock performer biopics. After a world premiere at Telluride, Springsteen arrives with a 67% fresh Rotten Tomatoes critics score. I hear presales stand at $1.5 million for the $55 million production shot everywhere around Springsteen’s stomping around in NJ. Global opening is factored at $20M with an 80% global market release sans Brazil (Oct. 30), Japan (Nov. 14) and Korea (Jan. 7). There’s 250 Imax auditoriums on this, and 750 PLFs stateside in what is a 3,460 theater booking. Stateside previews are at 2PM.
Shelby Oaks from YouTube critic (2M followers) Chris Stuckmann is the biggest horror movie in Kickstarter history. Pic is booked at 1,830 runs. NEON snapped up global rights prior to Fantasia premiere.