UPDATE with more Thursday numbers: Sony’s Screen Gems/Stage 6’s R-rated horror film Don’t Breathe drew $1.875 million from previews last night starting at 7 PM. That’s a great start that inches out the $1.8M earned by both last month’s Lights Out and Don’t Breathe director Fede Alvarez’s previous movie, 2013’s Evil Dead.
Evil Dead would go on to post a $25.8M opening, largely fueled by the franchise’s fervent fan base. Don’t Breathe‘s business will be in the spirit of such previous late August horror debuts as Jeepers Creepers ($13M) and Focus Features/Blumhouse’s Sinister 2, which posted $850K on its preview night before taking in a $10.5M FSS.
Roadside Attractions’ Obamas first-date movie Southside With You and The Weinstein Company’s Roberto Duran biopic Hands Of Stone, both platform releases, will not release Thursday numbers and will fold those takes into their Friday data.Among other newcomers this weekend, Lionsgate, under its Lionsgate Premiere, has the distributor’s 11th Jason Statham movie this weekend, the sequel Mechanic: Resurrection. It made $390K on 1800 screens and is poised to bank $7M-$9M for the weekend. Statham’s previous non-ensemble feature for Lionsgate, 2012’s Safe, loaded a $7.9M opening and a final cume of $17.1M.
Don’t Breathe marks the second collaboration between Alvarez and producer Sam Raimi following Evil Dead three years ago. The pic is poised to sack Warner Bros’ Suicide Squad for the No. 1 spot at the weekend box office with a three-day opening between $11.5M-$14M per industry projections at 3,051 sites. Yesterday, Fandango reported advance ticket sales for Don’t Breathe were out-clicking previous horror thrillers Lights Out ($21.7M opening) and The Visit ($25.4M).
Typically, with an R-rated horror film, the hard-core, older-male-skewing genre fans turn up on Thursday night. Sony premiered Don’t Breathe at SXSW and kept the buzz going with screenings at Comic-Con. From 78 reviews, it counts a Rotten Tomatoes score of 90%. Don’t Breathe carries an estimated production cost that’s under $10M.
Suicide Squad, which made $1.67M yesterday, saw its three week cume climb to $270.8M. This weekend, the David Ayer film is expected to bring in an estimated $10M-$11M, and if it does wind up slashing Don’t Breathe, it will be the first title this year to hold the No. 1 spot four weekends in a row. Currently, Suicide Squad is outpacing August’s previous comic book hit Guardians Of The Galaxy (final B.O. $333M) by 16%.
Roadside has been ticking up the theater count for Southside With You to 813. Many expect this movie, which was financed and produced by IM Global for under $5M, to pop at the B.O. this weekend with a three-day take between $3M-$5M. Miramax bought the movie at Sundance with Roadside as a partner for about $2M with a mid-seven-figure P&A commitment.
Given the fierce competition this weekend for Hispanic and African American moviegoers, the Weinsteins are opting to go wide with Hands Of Stone on Wednesday, August 31. Today the Jonathan Jakubowicz movie is playing at about 800 venues and it’s looking at an opening between $2.5M-$3.5M per industry tracking.
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