It’s official: Blumhouse is back in fine form.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, opening two months after Blumhouse hit Black Phone 2 debuted, topped the domestic box offic chart with a sizeable $63 million from 3,412 theaters to score the top opening ever for the post-Thanksgiving frame, among other milestones. That is not adjusted for inflation.
Overseas, the profit monster took an equally stellar $46 million fro 76 markets for an early global total of $109 million against a net production of $36 million before marketing.
Critics snubbed the Universal and Blumhouse sequel — Freddy 2‘s current ranking on Rotten Tomatoes is 13 percent, compared to 33 percent for the first — but audiences don’t seem to give a hoot. Freddy’s 2 earned a B CinemaScore (not bad for a horror title) and strong exits. And while it won’t match the $80 million domestic launch of the first Five Nights at Freddy‘s, it’s hard to compare the two because of markedly different play patterns.
Other milestones domestically: the sequel looks to score the second-best horror opening of the year so far domestically behind Atomic Monster’s The Conjuring Last Rites (Atomic Monster and Blumhouse merged in 2024); the year’s highest opening so far for a PG-13 horror pic ahead of Predator: Badlands; and the highest December horror opening ever at the domestic box office ahead of Scream 2.
In 2023, Blumhouse’s box-office horror phenomenon Five Nights at Freddy’s, based on the blockbuster game series by Scott Cawthon about the oversized animatronic animal figures that inhabit Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, became the highest-grossing horror film of the year in earning north of $300 million globally. Josh Hutcherson returns to lead the cast, with Emma Tammi also returning to direct.
The sequel topped Friday’s chart with a whopping $30.1 million, including previews.
Disney’s record-smashing Thanksgiving tentpole Zootopia 2 easily came in second in its third weekend with $43 million from 4,000 sites, bringing its domestic total to $220.6. Overseas, the animated pic took in another $219 million for a massive foreign tally of $695.3 million as it fast heads for the $1 billion mark at the global box office.
Universal and Jon M. Chu‘s Wicked: For Good fell a relatively steep 70 percent or more in its third weekend to an estimated $16.8 million from 3,985 locations for a domestic tally of $$297 million through Sunday, versus $322.1 million for the first Wicked at the same point in time (the first installment, opening over Thanksgiving 2024, declined 55 percent in it third outing). Similar to Zootopia, Wicked 2 shattered numerous records during its opening weekend before Thanksgiving.
GKIDS’ new anime pic Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution is slotted to come in fourth with an estimated $10 million from 1,823 cinemas.
Two Lionsgate titles — Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair and Now You See Me: Now You Don’t — are duking it out for fifth place with around $4 million each. They are playing in 1,198 and 2,626 theaters, respectively.
The Whole Bloody Affair unites 2003’s Kill Bill: Vol 1 and 2004’s Kill Bill: Vol 2 for the first time and includes a new and never-before-seen anime sequence. The film’s run time is well over four hours — or 281 minutes — but that, thankfully, includes a 15-minute intermission.
This story was originally published Dec. 6 at 9:39 a.m.
