Clown Vs. Clown: ‘Terrifier 3’ Shows Teeth With $18M+ As ‘Joker 2’ Posts Record Drop For DC Character Pic; Awards Season Darlings Shriek – Sunday Box Office

SUNDAY AM WRITETHRU AFTER SATURDAY AM: Refresh for updates and chart…In one of the year’s second-best triumphs for indie genre cinema after NEON’s Longlegs, Cineverse’s under $5M investment, Terrifier 3, is screaming to an estimated $18.3M+ 3-day after an $8.2M Friday and $5.9M Saturday. That Sunday hold -30% is on account of the Indigenous Peoples holiday. The threequel received a B CinemaScore, which is high praise from the moviegoer pollster as it doesn’t hand out a lot of As to horror titles.

The jawdropping awe is how this movie, which was largely marketed to Cineverse’s sole Bloody Disgusting fanbase and 80M streaming subscribers for under $1M, broke out to bigger numbers. Unlike some of the other wide entries this weekend, iSpot doesn’t show any national spots for Terrifier 3.

Many studios have tried this low P&A spend, laser focused demo marketing approach and just seem to come up short at the box office. What’s the secret to success when it comes to this approach in order to achieve high margin success at the box office?

Says Cineverse Boss Chris McGurk, “You have to be incredibly creative and different; you can’t downsize a traditional studio playbook. You have to go to extraordinary lengths, and you need to get creative.”

Cineverse hasn’t made big splashes in the theatrical space that much. They had the 2013 small indie movie about foster kids, Short Term 12, which launched star Brie Larson and that pic’s director Destin Daniel Cretton to greater Marvel Studios heights, but the movie only $1M. In the wake of that movie’s shortcoming at the B.O., Cineverse built itself into a niche demo streaming and FAST channel empire and ad tech business.

Some of the stunts for Terrifier 3 included teaming with promo partners like Venmo and Call of Duty. That videogame has a swatch of Halloween characters, and Terrifier 3‘s Art the Clown was one of them. There was a fake outdoor campaign and an Art the Clown street team in NYC. There was also a marketing partnership with Fandango.

Terrifier 2 developed quite the cult following in its theatrical and post-theatrical, and what’s going on here with Terrifier 3 is one of the oldest tricks in the Hollywood rulebook: noticing the popularity of IP in the home ancillaries of one sequel, and doubling down on the next installment, read Austin Powers 1 & 2, and John Wick 1 and 2. Cineverse saw a tripling in its Scream Box streaming subs after Terrifier 2 was released. They further expanded the audience, particularly Latino and Hispanic moviegoers who showed up at 48% to Caucasian’s 34%, 10% Black, 2% Asian and 5% Native American/other.

This is a great win for McGurk whose last streak of No. 1 movies was during his reign as MGM Vice Chairman and COO during the early aughts with movies such as Die Another Day, Legally Blonde, the Amityville Horror reboot starring Ryan Reynolds, Jeepers Creepers, Barbershop and even the Steve Martin-led Pink Panther (which he developed, but opened after his departure from the studio). He cites Terrifier 3 as by far the best box office result in regards to P&A spend.

PostTrak audiences gave Terrifier 3 four stars with a 76% positive and 59% definite recommend. Male leaning at 61% with 18-24 year olds being the largest demo at 37%. Terrifier 3 is playing evenly across the country, but best in East, South Central and West. AMC Burbank has the highest gross for the pic with $27K so far.  

PostTrak observed that under 25 moviegoers went in groups to see Terrifier 3: 19% took one friend, while 30% went with two to four friends. Sixty-two percent said they’d tell their friends to see this threequel in a theater, no matter what. Big walk-up business with 55% of Terrifier 3‘s crowd buying their tickets on the same day they watched it. Among the reasons why people went to this clown movie versus the other one on the marquee: 52% said it was part of a genre they love, while 40% said Terrifier 3 is part of a franchise they love.

Warner Bros’ second weekend of Joker: Folie à Deux is posting a -82% freefall with around $6.7M-$7M per industry estimates (Warners reporting official figure soon) — that’s the absolute worst hold for a DC character movie in the history of the brand on the big screen. Triple note, James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC Studios did not steer or shepherd Joker 2. The Joaquin Phoenix-Lady Gaga R-rated musical is even getting kicked out of No. 2 by a cartoon robot, DreamWorks Animation/Universal’s Wild Robot ($13.45M third weekend) and also out of third by Warner Bros’ own Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (estimated $7.3M sixth weekend). This drop isn’t a shocker as we saw Joker 2 doing worse than the second frame of Marvel Cinematic Universe’s The Marvels (-78%) which was the worst hold for that Disney label’s movies.

Joker 2‘s second weekend drop is steeper than the previous worst drop for a DC character movie, summer 2023’s The Flash (-73%). It’s also more severe than the second weekend of 2021’s The Suicide Squad (-72%) which remember had a theatrical day-and-date release with HBO Max; those dynamic distributed titles always tumbled in their second weekend. The only nice thing to say here about Joker 2 is that it’s second weekend is more than Wonder Woman 1984‘s second weekend ($5.4M) which of course was due to theater closures during Covid, and it’s better than the second weekend of Jonah Hex ($1.6M) which owns the worst opening ever for a DC movie at $5.3M.

However, a slew of prestige awards season contenders aren’t finding sizable audiences: Sony’s Saturday Night ($3.4M), Focus Features’ Piece by Piece ($3.8M), and Briarcliff Entertainment’s The Apprentice ($1.58M). Here’s what’s heart-wrenching: These are critically acclaimed movies which are vying for a shot this awards season, who had an immense amount of support from their respective studios, further bolstered by fall film festival launches, as well as wide PR support from filmmaker/casts, and they’re just not clicking. Each of these studios believed in these movies as theatrical plays. Hopefully their commercial results here won’t tarnish their awards season runway. Juxtapose this to Netflix, which will be trumpeting their wares Emilia Pérez and the Angelina Jolie-led Maria all the way to Oscar night, March 2, 2025. The box office for these movies won’t be reported, as the streamer gives them limited qualifying runs, and therefore their patina won’t be impacted.

“Streaming has just crushed the prospects for these types of movies,” said one rival studio executive about the misfiring going on here for Saturday Night (80% RT critics, B+ CinemaScore), Piece by Piece (81% RT critics, solid A CinemaScore) and Apprentice (77% RT critics, B- CinemaScore). At the same time, look at the rabbit which Searchlight pulled out of its hat in the bawdy Emma Stone, ultimate 4x Oscar winning Poor Things (which finaled at $34.5M stateside, $117.6M worldwide). What gives? Each of these pics, unfortunately, has their own set of mild acne, if not worse.

Note these movies are going earlier in the fall versus later in the holiday season due to the crowded field.

In the case of Saturday Night, it was evident its grosses weren’t strong enough during its platform in LA and NYC to sustain a further platform release. A longer platform could have developed more word of mouth, but this was limited in buzz. Furthermore, most platforms nowadays are three-stepped (exclusive NYC and LA, then limited, then wide). The weekend result here isn’t that far from Dumb Money, another movie that Sony embraced, but at the time a year ago felt challenged by the lack of its cast promoting due to the strike. Saturday Night is very a different situation. What to fix? Despite all good intentions in casting a fresh face ensemble here, perhaps Saturday Night could have been casted up just a bit. Dylan O’Brien is the biggest box office draw here (who is sublime as Dan Aykroyd), however, this isn’t the Dan Aykroyd story, therefore it wouldn’t make sense to fully lean into him in regards of promotion. Another hurdle organically for the movie is the fact that it’s being made outside of the Saturday Night Live parent company of NBCUniversal, which would have heralded it throughout all its tentacles. While Sony trailered this Telluride and TIFF premiere on all the big movies post Aug. 8, including Beeltejuice Beetlejuice and It Ends With Us, perhaps this trailer should have dropped earlier in the summer on Bad Boys: Ride or Die and Deadpool & Wolverine in order to tell audiences: Hey, this is an event movie you should see.

PostTrak exits are strong on Saturday Night at 82% and a 63% definite recommend. Mostly men at 54% with 55% of the audience between 18-34 and 44% over 35. Diversity demos were 67% Caucasian, 15% Latino and Hispanic, 7% Black, 9% Asian & 2% Native American/Other. Ticket sales are flat throughout the country, with any business being in the East. The Alamo New Mission in San Francisco is the best of the bunch with close to $9K so far.  

Piece by Piece — is it for kids? Or arthouse audiences? Despite any kind of clever, the comp this Focus Features entry is vying for are wide release documentaries which is the fifth best opening here at $3.8M among docs over the last ten years. That sub-group is led by Angel Studios’ wide release of After Death at $5M, and the Matt Walsh docu Am I Racist? recently posted $4.544M, the fourth best. Again, this Pharrell Williams ode cost Focus $16M. Docs in a limited way can leg out, and this movie also has 84% positive, 63% definite recommend on PostTrak. Mostly men at 58% with 16% of the audience between 13-17, 18-24 being the biggest turnout at 40% and the over 35 bunch at 27%. Diversity demos were 41% Caucasian, 29% Latino and Hispanic, 21% Black, 6% Asian & 4% Native American/other. Piece by Piece best bank is in the East, South and West with the AMC Century City the pic’s top grossing venue with north of $19K so far this weekend.

Despite any brilliant performance by Stan Sebastian as Donald Trump, Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn and Oscar nominee Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump, The Apprentice faced an uphill battle from the moment of “go” at Cannes. The Trump campaign legally threatened the film, the Ali Abbasi-directed pic showed the young real estate baron sexually assaulting his wife. The Trump campaign clearly sent a message to its faithful that this movie was anti-Trump even if the movie’s intent was to present an even-handed take on the man who would become POTUS. Various stunts from fall film festival plays, to headlines over CBS and ABC’s refusal to run ads during debates, to a plane buzzing a Reading, PA Trump rally couldn’t make up for a limited P&A spend. iSpot, which tracks movie TV spots, doesn’t show any spots registering for Apprentice.

Still, in the same breath, while all other distributors ran from Apprentice over their fears of any retaliation by Trump, Briarcliff stood tall and got behind this movie. Producer Kinematics stepped away due to “creative differences” as reported by Deadline (Rich Spirit stepped in to save the movie). I understand that Briarcliff couldn’t proceed with booking theaters and fully promoting the movie until Labor Day weekend. Another scenario that didn’t help: many of The Apprentice trailers were set to run on Apple’s George Clooney and Brad Pitt’s Wolfs, but then they scaled back the release of that pic from wide to limited. PostTrak is 71% positive, 46% definite recommend. Mostly men at 55% with 63% of the audience over 35 and the largest demo being the 55+ at 28%. Diversity demos were 72% Caucasian, 10% Latino and Hispanic, 10% Black, 7% Asian & 2% Native American/other. Light business in the East and West with the Alamo Brooklyn (NY) the highest grossing venue for the movie with close to $8k — that’s the highest gross in that theater. Other top theaters include AMC Century City, Regal Union Square, AMC Lincoln Square and Alamo South Lamar in Austin. Similar to its rivals this weekend —Saturday Night and Piece by Piece — the best days for Apprentice lie ahead in the home market; theatrical being the biggest advertisement.

Toho International’s My Hero Academia: You’re Next did $1.36M on Friday turning in $3M off an A- CinemaScore. PostTrak is 83% positive and 64% definite recommend with kids giving it an 88% positive. 60% men. Largest demo is 18-24 at 32%. Diversity demos are 39% Latino and Hispanic, 30% Caucasian, 15% Black, 11% Asian & 5% Native American/other. My Hero business is concentrated in the South, South Central and West with the AMC Empire in NYC the best gross with $6k-plus.

A24’s Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh weepy romance We Live in Time grossed $225,9K this weekend at five LA and NYC combined locations (AMC Lincoln Square, the Angelika, AMC Grove, AMC Burbank, AMC Century City) with some solid ticket sales. Friday was $101.6K, Saturday was $71K with an opening theater average of $45,1K, which is the fourth best YTD after Kinds of Kindness ($75.4K), Saturday Night ($54K), and Deadpool & Wolverine ($50K). Critics like it at 79% fresh on RT.

Despite the win here for Terrifier 3 and a new disibutor in the theatrical space breaking through, the Debbie-downer news is that the entire weekend for all films is totaling an estimated $75.8M, which is -13% off from last weekend and 43% off from a year ago when the actors’ strike was still impacting the marketplace. How’s that? Why aren’t we up? Because it was a year ago that AMC’s Taylor Swift: Eras Tour posted the second best opening ever for the October domestic B.O. with $93.2M.

Chart updating…indicated by inclusion of Saturday and Sunday figures.

FRIDAY PM: Industry midday projections show Cineverse’s Terrifier 3 to be the bigger clown at the box office this weekend, with an estimated Friday around $7.7M for a potential $15M-plus 3-day at 2,514 theaters It would be great story for the business if a little movie like this can hold to this potential, and if it buckles, it’s only because it’s truly fan-frontloaded.

Again, Cineverse kept this strictly marketed to its fanbase; the social media reach on the threequel per RelishMix is 80M across TikTok, Facebook, X, YouTube and Instagram, which is not as wide as, say, a studio movie like Saw X, which counted an SMU of 134M before opening. “While light in reach, the top-cast Lauren Lavera at 166K and David Howard Thornton at 133K are activated,” RelishMix reports about Terrifier 3‘s actors.

Second place goes to Universal/DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot at 3,848 locations for what’s $3.6M today, a $13.1M third weekend, -31%, and a running total of $83.3M; standing tall.

Third belongs to Warner Bros’ Joker: Folie à Deux at 4,102 locations, which is seeing a second Friday of $2.8M for an $8M-$9M second weekend, -77%. Put a pin on that. Let’s not make any judgments until Saturday morning. On the high end, that’s $53.5M by EOD Sunday. Joker 2 for the most part keeps all the Imax auditoriums.

Next is Warner Bros’ Beetlejuice Beetlejuice at 3,408 locations with a sixth Friday of $1.8M and 3-day of $6.7M, -34%, for a running estimated total by Sunday of $275.2M.

Paramount’s fourth weekend of Transformers One is next at 2,758, with a $1M Friday and 3-day of $4.1M, -23%, for a running total of $53.3M.

And in a sad state of affairs, the rest of the critically acclaimed wide-release entries and aspiring awards darlings aren’t making any waves: Sony’s Saturday Night ($1.55M Friday, $4M wide break at 2,309 sites), Focus Features’ Piece by Piece ($1.25M Friday, $3M weekend at 1,863) and, worst, Briarcliff Entertainment’s The Apprentice with $500K today and $1.3M-$1.5M opening. This speaks to a greater dilemma when it comes to moviegoers’ immediate want-to-see when it comes to smaller films and what they decipher on a streaming menu; not that these titles were meant for streaming. More as it comes this weekend.

FRIDAY AM: Cineverse’s unrated slasher threequel Terrifier 3 grossed out $2.6M in Thursday previews that began at 8 p.m. There’s speculation that this microbudget movie, which cost Cineverse under $5M in its entirety for acquisition and P&A, will topple Warner Bros’ Joker: Folie à Deux from the top spot of the box office in its second weekend with an $11M+ take.

We will see. It all depends if Cineverse’s thrifty marketing campaign finds a greater audience beyond the core the which it’s being promoted: its streaming subs and Blooding Disgusting followers. The horror movie from writer-director Damien Leone is 94% with Rotten Tomatoes audiences, and 78% with critics. Comscore/Screen Engine’s PostTrak didn’t capture audience exits on the pic.

“The early box office numbers putting Terrifier 3 at No. 1 after early previews are far beyond our expectations, and we are thrilled to see how strongly the Terrifier fanbase has come out in support of the franchise’s new chapter,” Cineverse Chairman and CEO Chris McGurk said in a statement Friday morning. “This success is proof that a quality indie film can hold its own theatrically despite being unrated and going up against big studio features and buzzy festival darlings, and is a testament to [producer] Phil [Falcone] and Damien’s vision and connection to those most passionate about the horror genre.”

Terrifier 3’s preview cash is similar to the Tuesday preview take of 2018 Blumhouse/Universal movie The First Purge, which posted a $17.3M 3-day and $31.2M five-day — but keep in mind that’s with a big major-studio spend. It’s also a notch above the $2.5M previews of Warner Bros.’ Evil Dead Rise last year, which grossed a great $24.5M for the 3-day weekend.

Joker: Folie à Deux ended its first week with $44.55M after a $1.1M Thursday, -12% from Wednesday. That first-week take is 19% behind the first week of Marvel Studios’ 2023 bomb The Marvels, which did $54.8M (yes, it was a PG-13 film, just the lowest in the MCU by sheer comp), but it’s 15% ahead of Warner Bros’ Furiosa, which did $38.9M in its first week. Marvels dropped 72% in its second weekend, the worst ever for an MCU title, while Furiosa declined by 60% in its sophomore session. Marvels ended its domestic run at $84.5M, while Furiosa settled at $67.4M.

RELATED: ‘Piece By Piece’ Review: An Animated Pharrell Williams Biopic Gets A LEGO Up On The Format – And It Works

Other previews from Thursday night include Focus Features’ Morgan Neville-directed Pharrell Williams Lego documentary, Piece by Piece, which did $450K from 1,500 theaters. It’s expected to make anywhere from $3M-$9M this weekend. The docu received a 60% definite recommend and 4½ stars on PostTrak. Thursday previews began at 2 p.m. Critics like it at 86% RT.

RELATED: ‘Saturday Night’ Cast: Who’s Who In ‘SNL’ Opening-Night Movie From Jason Reitman

Sony’s wide break of SNL origins movie Saturday Night made $370K from previews that began at 2 p.m. Thursday. That money will be rolled into today’s take. The Jason Reitman-directed feature is expected to do $3M-$5M this weekend in its national wide break. The only good news here is that audiences like it at 4½ stars and 84% positive on PostTrak, with RT critics score of 80% certified fresh and 92% audience. The movie already has banked north of $731K in its two-week platform release. Last year, Sony’s Dumb Money — which was vying for awards-season glory — did $3.3M at 2,837 theaters in its wide break; the pic’s muted grosses were a result of the actors strike, with talent unable to promote. Saturday Night cost $30M before P&A.

RELATED: The Fire Behind The Film: ‘The Apprentice’

Briarcliff Entertainment’s The Apprentice movie about young real estate baron Donald Trump and his mentor Roy Cohn didn’t do so well, with $150K in previews after a 4 p.m. start Thursday. Critics love the pic starring Jeremy Strong, Sebastian Stan and Maria Bakalova at 79% certified fresh, but early Thursday audiences on PostTrak gave it 2½ stars and a 45% definite recommend. Briarcliff gave this movie a shot by acquiring it and giving it a big-screen release amid the Trump campaign threatening its production with a lawsuit. Briarcliff is on the hook for P&A.

RELATED: ‘The Apprentice’ Backer Lauds Briarcliff’s Tom Ortenberg – The Only Distributor “That Had The Balls To Get Us Here” – As Film Set To Open