Paramount‘s prequel A Quiet Place: Part One made a loud entrance at the domestic box office with a franchise-best $6.8 million in Thursday previews.
That’s an impressive start, considering this is the first entry not directed by franchise creator John Krasinski or starring Emily Blunt (Krasinski starred in the first one as well).
Instead, Michael Sarnoski (Pig) directed Day One based on a story he and Krasinski came up with together. Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn star star in the sci-fi horror-thriller. The movie cost $70 million to produce before marketing.
Heading into the weekend, tracking suggested the threequel will open to $40 million-plus. There’s plenty of room for upside, based on strong reviews and audience scores, and considering that the June box office has been in major rebound mode since Bad Boys: Ride or Die and Inside Out 2 came along earlier in the month.
A Quiet Place, earning $4.3 million in previews, was a sleeper hit at the 2018 box office upon opening to $50 million despite virtually no dialogue. A Quiet Place: Part II, hitting theaters over Memorial Day in 2022 as the box office was still in recovery mode from the pandemic, posted a four-day holiday gross of $57 million, including $47 million for the three-day weekend. The sequel grossed $4.8 million in previews.
There’s no word yet on how much Kevin Costner‘s pricey $100 million Western, Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter One did in previews, but it’s likely not a big sum considering it is targeting older males who don’t tend to rush out to see a film.
Horizon is without a doubt the biggest curiosity factor of the weekend considering Costner left behind a lucrative gig on Taylor Sheridan’s hit show Yellowstone and put up hundreds of millions of his own month make his decades-long passion project a reality, four period Western movies.
Costner’s film is tracking to open in the $10 million to $12 million range, a worrisome start for a three-hour movie costing $100 million to produce. Many box office pundits believe the movie will over perform in America’s heartland and come in higher.
Warners agreed to distribute and market the movie for a fee in the U.S. Costner — who has tirelessly promoted the movie — invested $38 million of his own money, while two mystery investors also ponied up equity. The rest came from selling off foreign rights with the help of sales outfit K5 International, which premiered the film at the Cannes Film Festival. (It opens in numerous markets this weekend).
Horizon: An American Saga: Chapter Two opens in short order on Aug. 16 in one of the unusual distribution schemes in Hollywood history. Costner also put up most of the marketing money.
Not even Quiet Place: Day One appears to have a shot at stealing the box office crown from Pixar and Disney’s Inside Out 2, which is preparing to become the first film since Barbie nearly a year ago to join the billion-dollar club at the global box office. It is expected to achieve the feat on Sunday or Monday as it wraps up its third weekend, and faster than any animated film in history.
Frozen II, from Pixar’s sister division Walt Disney Animation Studios, is the top-grossing animated film of time at $1.45 billion globally. The last animated film to cross $1 billion was Illumination and Universal’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie in 2023, while the last Pixar title to do so was Incredibles 2 in 2019.
More to come.
