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
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