Halloween fell on a weekend in 2020, and in a normal year that would probably lead to a huge box office take for whichever horror film released. However, with Halloween Kills delayed and the COVID-19 pandemic meaning that cinemas are still not entirely safe, just one new horror film went wide over the weekend, and while it topped the US box office, it didn’t earn much.
Come Play, aka The Babadook But With An iPad, was the weekend’s top movie. Deadline reports that the movie has earned an estimated $3.15 million over the weekend from 2183 screens, overtaking last week’s #1, Honest Thief. That movie, which stars Liam Neeson, dropped 43% for a $1.35 million weekend.
Come Play stars Gillian Jacobs (Community), John Gallagher Jr. (Westworld), and Azhy Robertson (Marriage Story). Reviews have been mixed, but leaning positive, with a 59 rating on Metacritic.
While $3.15 million isn’t a huge take, the film’s budget was just $9 million, so no one is losing too much money here. There’s no real precedent to compare this to; the closest comparison is the most recent horror film to open wide in the US, The New Mutants, which opened to $7 million in August (and had X-Men brand recognition).
This is also, notably, the first weekend since release that Tenet has dropped below $1 million across a weekend at the domestic box office. It earned $885k from October 30-November 1. This is Tenet’s 9th week in cinemas, and it has earned $53.8 million in the US and $293.3 million in the rest of the world, for a total of $347.1 million.
Also opening in limited release over the weekend was horror movie Spell, which earned $210k from 369 screens.
