by Conan Simmons – January 18, 2022 – 7:24 pm
Audiences craving to be scared again have made the latest installment in the ‘Scream’ franchise the number one movie at theaters thus ending the phenomenal month long run of ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’.
As it was a four-day holiday weekend, in observance of Martin Luther King Day, the box office numbers were a little padded out but even without the extra day ‘Scream’ still managed to take the top spot on the Weekend Box Office Top 5 by nearly $10 million.
The major trade outlets love publishing their box office estimates as gospel on Sunday morning before that night’s tally can manage to become tangible and because of that, as well as estimating for Monday, they pronounced ‘Scream’ at a haul of nearly $36 million. The fact is ‘Scream’ made around $30 million Friday thru Sunday with an added $3 million on Monday for a total of $33.8 million over the course of the full holiday weekend. That’s more than enough to topple the popular web-slinger who swung in with a four-day total of $24.6 million.
The success of ‘Scream’ is a good sign for theaters going forward showing that audiences are willing to show up for characters not wearing spandex. Now if only Hollywood would start focusing on making quality movies instead of a quantity of movies to sell struggling streaming services. Horror films may be popular but even the success of ‘Halloween Kills’ wasn’t enough to keep the streaming service Peacock from reporting nearly $560 million loss for 2021.
‘Scream’ stars Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox and David Arquette who all return from previous movies in the popular franchise which began with the exact-same-titled film ‘Scream’ in 1996, a flick directed by Wes Craven that gave critical acclaim to a long-derided genre. As Wes Craven passed away in 2015, this new ‘Scream’ is directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, directors of the fun cult horror comedy ‘Ready or Not’. Also joining the original stars taking on Ghostface is rising star Jenna Ortega who will be playing Wednesday Addams in Tim Burton’s straight to streaming series, ‘Wednesday’, due out later this year.
The rest of the Weekend Box Office Top 5 is rounded out by the animated hit sequel ‘Sing 2’ and a pair of action-adventure flicks, ‘The 355’ and ‘The King’s Man’.
Will ‘Scream’ be able to fend off ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ next weekend or will the wall crawler reign again? Looking forward into February, does the toppling of Marvel’s Spider-Man mean the crazy antics of Johnny Knoxville and crew can win the top spot February 4 with ‘Jackass 4’, or will the Halle Berry sci-fi flick ‘Moonfall’ be on top?
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE TOP 5 (January 14-17, 2022 – MLK Day holiday)
- ‘Scream’ – $33.8 million – horror (debut)
- ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ – $24.6 million – fantasy (drop $8 million, 25% down)
- ‘Sing 2’ – $10.3 million – animated (drop $1.3 million, 11% down)
- ‘The 355’ – $2.7 million – action-adventure (drop $1.9 million, 41% down)
- ‘The King’s Mans’ – $2.6 million – action-adventure (drop $600k, 19% down)
Total for the Weekend Box Office Top 5 comes to $74 million. This is a gain of $19.7 million, an increase of 36% from last weekend’s total of $54.3 million.