With an estimated $27.2 million from 3,663 cinemas, The Exorcist: Believer finished first at the weekend box office with ease. The R-rated movie had a solid domestic opening in this environment, but it fell short of expectations as it attempts to resuscitate the brand after Universal allegedly paid a hefty $400 million for the rights.
The film had an international opening of $45.1 million with $17.9 million from its top 40 regions.
Exact 50 years after the first Exorcist made movie history by debuting, the David Gordon Green-helmed horror film, which earned over $450 million worldwide before adjusting for inflation, hits theaters. Linda Blair and Ellen Burstyn were the stars of the William Friedkin-directed movie, which was based on the William Peter Blatty novel.
Taylor Swift recently revealed that The Eras Tour, her new concert film, will debut worldwide on October 13 because to the fact that both movies will attract to younger viewers, forcing Believer to advance its release by one week. It’s never a good idea to modify the release date at the last minute because the old date may still be printed on some marketing materials, such as billboards and other outdoor advertisements. Swift’s film is predicted to be the biggest event of the year and is now tracking for a $100 million to $125 million domestic launch.
Exorcist: Believer, produced by Blumhouse, Morgan Creek, and Universal, had a production budget of only $30 million, and there are already plans for two more movies (the follow-up will be released in theaters in 2025). In 2021, Universal purchased the rights from Creek as traditional studios scrambled to keep up with streamers.
The highly successful reboot of the Halloween franchise was created by the same team as Green, Universal, and Hollywood’s master of horror, Jason Blum. Halloween had a record-breaking $72.2 million domestic debut in 2018.
The Exorcist: Believer was projected to have a $30 million to $36 million domestic opening this weekend.
It is the fourth movie in the series; the second and third weren’t very good. Burstyn plays Chris MacNeil, a famous actress who has been irreparably changed by what happened to her daughter Regan fifty years earlier, in the film for the first time since the original 1973 version. Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.), whose daughter (Lidya Jewett) and her friend (Olivia Marcum), both become possessed, is the main character.
Whether negative reviews are harming Believer is difficult to assess. Only 23% of critics have rated it on Rotten Tomatoes, while moviegoers gave it a C CinemaScore, which isn’t altogether unexpected for a horror movie. (However, Saw X was given a B and The Nun II a C+.) The good news is that it received high scores from moviegoers in PostTrak’s audience exit polls.
The market for horror is also overdeveloped. Following Exorcist and PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie, which earned $11.8 million from 4,027 locations in its second outing, Saw X, which made its debut at $18.6 million a week ago, earned an estimated $8.2 million from 3,262 theaters in its second outing to place third. With a stated production budget of around $13 million, Lionsgate’s most recent Saw movie saw a 55 percent decline, earning $32.5 million domestically in just 10 days.
For a 10-day domestic total of $38.9 million and $87.1 million globally against a modest $30 million budget, Paramount’s PAW sequel did well with families, falling only 48 percent.
The Nun II, which debuted to $32.6 million last month, is currently in its fifth weekend and has amassed an estimated $2.6 million from 2,492 theaters to rank No. 7 on the US box office chart for the weekend of October 6–8. With domestic revenues of $81 million and astounding international receipts of $167.6 million, New Line’s horror film has generated $248.7 million worldwide against a $38 million budget.
With regard to the top five movies of the weekend, New Regency’s original sci-fi epic The Creator had a 57 percent drop in its second outing to $8.2 million from 3,680 theaters, bringing its 10-day domestic total to $24.9 million and its global total to $61.8 million compared to a $80 million production budget.
With $3.1 million from 1,314 theaters and a 10-day domestic haul of $10.5 million, Fathom’s The Blind, which follows the family of Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson, completed the top five.
Additionally, Disney’s rerelease of Hocus Pocus, which brought in $1.5 million from 1,430 theaters, cracked the top 10 chart in a nice pre-Halloween twist.
Dicks: The Musical, produced by Chernin Entertainment and A24, sung loudly at the specialty box office when it debuted in its first seven locations in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The jubilant R-rated musical achieved a great location average of $31,552, which was one of the best per-theater averages of the weekend and the year. Dicks: The Musical, which Larry Charles is directing, is based on The Parent Trap and stars the comedic pair of Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson.
There was other action in speciality movies as well. Neon’s The Royal Hotel debuted in 267 theaters for an average of $1,255 per venue. She Came to Me, a film by Vertical, opened in 355 theaters with an average ticket price of $1,014.