'Longlegs' Has Scary Good Opening Weekend
by EG
Despicable Me 4 continued at the top the box office this week as the Return of the Sequel defines the summer of 2024, but the biggest story of the weekend was the performance of Longlegs. The new thriller starring Nicolas Cage performed much better than expected, although it was no match for the animated behemoths (including Inside Out 2) that are dominating the season in terms of ticket sales. Read on for details.
Animation continue to the be hero of the summer office thanks to Despicable Me 4 and Inside Out 2, but Neon‘s Longlegs can rightly take a bow after scoring the biggest opening for an independent horror pic in a decade with $22.6 million in ticket sales.
From Illumination and Universal, DM4 easily stayed atop the domestic box office chart in its second weekend with $44.7 million from 4,449 theaters as it jumped the $200 million mark to finish Sunday with a North American tally of $211.1 million. Overseas, Gru and the mischievous Minions also continued to stir up strong sales, earning $88 million from 78 markets for a foreign tally of $226.7 million and $437.8 million globally.
In a notable milestone, the Despicable Me/Minions franchise has crossed $5 billion mark in global ticket sales, a feat no animated franchise has achieved before. (Earlier this week, Illumination announced that a Minions 3 is in the works.)
The big surprise of the weekend is the better-than-expected performance of writer-director Osgood Perkins Longlegs, a serial killer chiller starring Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage. The tense FBI procedural, playing in 2,510 cinemas, is the biggest opening ever for Tom Quinn‘s Oscar-winning specialty production and distribution outfit Neon, home of Parasite.
Among other records, it’s Cage’s biggest opening since National Treasure: Book of Secrets almost twenty years ago in 2007. It’s also the top R-rated opening of 2024 to date. And it is the only indie horror film of the past decade to open to $20 million or more (this excludes one of the Insidious movies from Focus Features/Universal).
Going back as far as 25 years, Neon also notes that very few indie films have crossed the $20 million threshold in their debut. For purposes of context, however, many indie titles — including Neon releases — only open a few theaters, versus rolling out nationwide from the get-go as Longlegs did.
The well-reviewed movie earned $10 million on Friday alone, including previews, and wasn’t hampered by a C+ Cinemascore, since it’s common for the horror genre to land a grade in the C range. Fun fact: More than 70 percent of ticket buyers were between ages 18 and 34.
The record-shattering Inside Out 2 — which has a shot at becoming the top-grossing animated film of all time — finished Sunday with a global cume of $1.35 billion. It’s already become the top-grossing Pixar title of all time and the third biggest animated title, not adjusted for inflation. The film has helped propel Disney become the first major studio to cross the $2 billion mark in 2024 global ticket sales.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.