New York, Jan. 17 (U.S.): A month later in no. #1, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” was finally surpassed at the box office. Paramount Pictures’ “Scream” rebooted with $30.6 million in ticket sales over the weekend, according to studio estimates on Sunday.
“Scream,” the self-described “re-order” which is the fifth film in the series and the reboot to introduce a new, younger cast, led all releases over the weekend at Martin Luther King Jr. Paramount expects it to total $35 million, including Monday’s total. The Associated Press (AP) reported that “Scream,” which cost about $24 million to produce, added another $18 million in 50 international markets.
This led to a strong revival of the self-aware slasher franchise. Spyglass Media Group acquired the rights to “Scream” films, once the credible cash cow for Harvey and Bob Weinstein’s Miramax films, which produced the new film with Paramount. Directed by Matt Pettinello Olbin and Tyler Gillett, “Scream” was the first film not directed by Wes Craven, who died in 2015. The original “Scream” cast members Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette along with new additions Melissa Barrera, Gina Ortega and Jack Quaid.
Most notably, “Scream” is the first box office success of a year Hollywood hopes will see a return to weekly stability in movie theaters. January is usually a quiet period at the box office, but the omicron variable rush in COVID-19 has shifted plans to release some winter films.
“All of our traditional actions have been off to a solid start, but as I kept telling people, ‘We’re still in this and it’s hard to say what’s really going to happen,'” said Chris Aronson, Paramount’s head of distribution. “Now we are open, people have seen the movie and we go out and run. We hope this becomes another building block towards rebuilding the business and bringing it back to some semblance of normalcy.”
Meanwhile, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” slipped to second place but continued to climb up the record books.
“No Way Home” grossed $20.8 million in its fifth week of release. Sony Pictures predicts that with another $5.2 million on Martin Luther King Jr.’s day, “No Way Home” will reach a domestic cumulative gross of $703.9 million on Monday, beating out “Black Panther” and moving to fourth place all-time. That puts it behind “Avatar” ($760 million), “Avengers: Endgame” ($858 million), and Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($936 million). Globally, “No Way Home” grossed $1.6 billion.
Universal Pictures’ “Sing 2” landed in third place on its fourth weekend with $8.3 million over its three-day weekend. The animated supplement has grossed $122.1 million domestically and $96.3 million internationally.
While Paramount may celebrate the debut of “Scream,” which pushed most of its 2021 releases to 2022 (movies including “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Mission Impossible 7”), its performance also embodied current box office realities. . Superhero movies and genre movies that appeal to younger audiences are almost back to their pre-pandemic levels, while older movies haven’t.
“Scream,” which received largely positive reviews (81% recently on Rotten Tomatoes) and a B+ CinemaScore rating from audiences, fared better than its last release, “Scream 4..” For 2011 this movie was released for $19.3 million. Sony said 42 percent of the audience for the new “Scream” is under the age of 25. But any success needs to pull from various demographics, and the song “Scream” also appealed to fans of the franchise’s first entries. About 23 percent of ticket buyers were over 35 years old.
The only other film widely released over the weekend is “Belle,” Mamoru Hosoda’s critically acclaimed animated film “Beauty and the Beast”. It debuted for $1.6 million in 1,326 theaters.
Estimated ticket sales Friday through Sunday in US and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore.
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