Five Nights At Freddy’s jump-scares Taylor and Scorsese at the weekend box office
The horror game sensation is breaking records at the domestic box office
Aux News Scorsese
As predicted, video game adaptation Five Nights At Freddy’s has opened at the top of the U.S. box office with $78 million, enough to make it the highest-grossing opening weekend in studio Blumhouse’s history (yes, higher than David Gordon Green’s first Halloween) and the highest-grossing debut on Halloween weekend in the history of movies/Halloween. And that’s for a movie that also debuted day-and-date on Peacock, which is either a testament to the theatrical experience or an indictment of the Peacock experience. Or both. (Also, someone make sure to ask FNAF creator Scott Cawthon what he does with the money he makes from this movie.)
That $78 million was also enough to easily crush Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, which to $14 million in its third weekend and is just a hair short of $150 million total. Behind those is Killers Of The Flower Moon, with $9 million and a total of $40 million in its second week. Fourth place went to newcomer After Death, which is some churchy non-Halloween counter-programming about documented evidence of an afterlife from Angel Studios (the company behind Sound Of Freedom).
It beat fifth place’s The Exorcist: Believer by a couple million dollars, which is—for lack of a better word—damning (after four weeks, that very expensive franchise-restarter only has $59 million). Then it’s PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie, the kind of long movie title that we begin to resent after five weeks on the charts, newcomer Freelance (just $2 million in its debut), The Nightmare Before Christmas rerelease, Saw X (it has made less money than The Exorcist, but people generally seem happier with it), and finally The Creator.
Way further down the charts we have The Holdovers and Priscilla, both of which opened in less than 10 theaters and neither of which made much money because of it.
Here’s the top 10 again from Box Office Mojo.
- Five Nights At Freddy’s
- Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
- Killers Of The Flower Moon
- After Death
- The Exorcist: Believer
- PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie
- Freelance
- The Nightmare Before Christmas
- Saw X
- The Creator
10 Comments
I am waiting to read the inevitable long form journalism piece (not on this site, don’t be daft) cracking open the vast money laundering scheme that goes into fluffing up ticket sales for the recent Q-Anon and church propaganda movies. Someone is fleecing the flock, and if that someone is smart, they already plan to run away to a country without an extradition treaty, but I have a feeling they’re going to ride the good times too long and wind up in prison fifteen years from now.
Oh come on, we all know how this plays out. They’ll lose their life savings in some sort of crypto scam or whatever. Then they’ll go on an apology tour while touting their OnlyFans (or worse — a podcast.)
I’m of two minds. On the one hand, the suggestion that the Pay It Forward system is actually some kind of elaborate astroturfing/money laundering scheme to inflate their movies’ box office numbers, absent any evidence, strikes me as ironically conspiracy theory territory. It’s already easy to buy as many movie tickets as you want from any of the major chains and then just not go. The website also disclaimed that they wouldn’t refund money if they had more people that paid it forward than people that actually wanted to see it, so the fact that there were multiple instances of theaters that were supposedly sold out despite being no where near full isn’t surprising.But on the other hand, if you’re going to the trouble of convincing people that they have a moral obligation to watch a movie so great that they should pay for other people to see it, you’re probably not above doing something illegal.
I was actually kind of interested in seeing the After Death one myself, until I noticed the name of the studio.
“…or an indictment of the Peacock experience.” Barsanti! That was funny.
Why do all the Five Nights at Freddy’s mascots always look like they’re slightly disappointed that they’re in a Five Nights at Freddy’s movie?
They were hoping for a serious movie about the rise and fall of Showbiz Pizza so they could show off their dramatic chops.
They were made by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop… so from pedigree alone they are disappointed to be in Five Nights…
Five Night’s of Freddy was so MEH at best. Saw it on peacock and it was just A movie.
I didn’t know a thing about Freelance until I saw the poster at my theater this weekend. How bad does a John Cena movie have to be to get NO promotion?