BAD BOYS 4: RIDE OR DIE | THE WATCHERS openings | Horror genre update | June 7 to 9, 2024 weekend
Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary
The current weekend: June 7 to 9, 2024
1) Bad Boys 4: Ride or Die opening
- This is an excellent opening for the 4th episode of an action comedy series. The weekend figure is well above average, with a small drop from Bad Boys 3's 2020 pre-pandemic opening. Critics' reviews are lukewarm, but audience scores are very good (an A- CinemaScore).
Very few action comedies get to four episodes — the jokes start to run thin and the stories get repetitive — but when they do, they hold up well (they drop only -4% from the prior opening). Bad Boys is in elite company and the series has room to run. These are excellent numbers:
2) The Watchers opening
- This is a fair opening for a new horror film. The weekend start is average for a single episode horror title, and not in the league of a horror series launch. Reviews and audience scores are poor (a C- CinemaScore), although those are not particularly influential for this genre:
The budget was an est. $30m — that’s high for this sort of movie. As noted, horror pics are driven by the hook: the evil doll, the wicked smile, the invisible or silent presence, the possessed child, the found footage. That's what draws the horror crowd. But the hook isn’t clear enough here and the film isn’t landing.
3) Horror genre update
- Horror movies had an outstanding year in 2023, returning to pre-pandemic BO levels after several rough years between 2020 and 2022. The lineup had a strong mix of new stories (Five Nights at Freddy’s, M3gan), and ongoing series (Nun 2, Insidious 5, Scream VI) — it’s in the chart below.
- Following 2023’s success, the number of titles has grown in 2024. We've already had 12 horror openings this year, and 14 more are dated through December. 2024 could easily finish with 30 in total — a sharp increase over 2023. Horror films come out of nowhere and drop like fruit from a tree.
But so far, nothing has broken through. The big pics lay ahead, starting with A Quiet Place 3 later this month. Many of the movies are made for very little money, and for this genre, budget doesn’t matter. Pack a dark room with screaming and laughing 15-to-34 year-olds, and anything can catch fire and go on a run:
Blumhouse had a particularly great year in 2023: Five Nights at Freddy’s, Insidious 5, M3gan, Exorcist: Believer — $797m in total worldwide BO on roughly $78m of collective production costs. Not bad. Like everyone, Blumhouse is having a quieter 2024 (Imaginary finished with $39.1m, They Listen is dated in late August, and Speak No Evil is in mid-September).
- Last year coming out of the pandemic, horror was a pillar of strength. It isn’t the biggest genre (in 2023, horror films represented 10.2% of Hollywood’s worldwide BO), but the filmmaking is creative and inexpensive. Right now, as with so much of the business, the lineup is wait and see. A complete list of 2024 horror titles is here.