LOS ANGELES, March 24 — Talk about scary good.
Us, the second directorial effort from Jordan Peele, pulled off a stunning debut, generating US$70 million from 3,741 North American locations. That haul is enough to land it the second-best opening weekend of the year behind just Disney’s Captain Marvel (US$153 million). The psychological thriller about a family confronted by a band of doppelgangers nearly doubled projections, which estimated a three-day total in the US$38 million to US$45 million range.
Us now has the largest weekend for original horror movie, surpassing A Quiet Place, as well as the biggest launch for an original R-rated film behind Ted. It also shattered the benchmark set by Peele’s directorial debut Get Out, which launched with US$33 million in 2017.
Universal, Jason Blum, and Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions produced Us for US$20 million. Since its debut at the South by Southwest Film Festival, Us has built up word of mouth. It has a 94 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes, rare praise for the horror genre. It stars Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke as a couple forced to fend off blood-thirsty clones while vacationing with their kids.
While Us catered to moviegoers looking for a good fright, Captain Marvel was doing some terrifying business of its own during the superhero blockbuster’s third weekend of release. The female-fronted tentpole added another US$34 million, taking its domestic tally past US$320 million.
Since no studios dared to release a movie in anticipation of Us, a number of holdovers rounded out domestic box office charts. Paramount Pictures’ animated adventure Wonder Park landed in third place, earning US$9 million for a North American bounty of US$29 million.
Five Feet Apart, a romantic drama about two teens who fall in love while undergoing treatment for cystic fibrosis, secured the fourth slot with US$8.5 million. The film has earned US$26 million to date.
Coming in at No. 5 is Universal and DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. The conclusion to the Dragon trilogy pocketed US$6.5 million in its fifth weekend in theatres, bringing its domestic total to US$145 million.
Among specialty releases, Bleecker Street’s Hotel Mumbai pulled in US$89,492 when it bowed in four theatres in New York and Los Angeles, translating to US$21,623 per venue. The R-rated terrorist thriller — starring Dev Patel and Armie Hammer — follows the victims and survivors of the 2008 attacks at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in India. The movie was pulled from theatres in New Zealand following the Christchurch shooting. — Variety.com/Reuters
