NOPE opening | Jordan Peele and original horror movies | Pandemic update | July 22 to 24, 2022 weekend
Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary
The current weekend: July 22 to 24, 2022
1) Nope opening and original horror movies
- This is an excellent opening for an original horror movie. The weekend figure is far above average for the genre, as it was for each of Jordan Peele’s first two films. Nope is ambitious and original — the movie combines elements of horror and sci-fi, in a Western setting. The opening isn’t as big as Us’s start, but it's still extremely impressive.
- Reviews are very good for Nope, with a few exceptions, and audience ratings are good-not-great. The response is not as enthusiastic as it was for Get Out and Us, but it’s positive and what you would expect of a genre-bending story like this:
- Foreign business is a weakness for original horror movies, including Jordan Peele's films. Some of the themes and characters are uniquely American, and do not translate equally well in all foreign cultures — you can see it in the numbers above.
2) Pandemic update
- Average new Covid cases in the U.S. are rising again, although they are not close to the level of the most recent high at the start of the year. But most importantly, deaths from Covid remain low now.
- 80% to 90% of moviegoers feel comfortable attending a movie at a theater (NRG tracking survey), which is consistent with the level of total moviegoing we've seen during the last couple of months — total moviegoing is down around -10% to -15% compared with 2019.
- Americans are going about their lives now with some risk of Covid, but with little danger of serious illness. 67.2% of all Americans, and 71.4% of Americans 5 years and older are fully vaccinated (at least two shots). We’ve had 89.9 million Covid cases reported (plus additional cases unreported). Moviegoing conditions should be stable now and improve as the population continues to gain resistance:
- Next weekend we'll have domestic moviegoing numbers for the four weeks that make up July. This is another strong month and we continue to be excited about what we're seeing at the box office in general.