Friday Box Office: 'Immaculate' and 'Late Night With the Devil' Open Strong As 'Dune 2' Tops 'Wonka'

Both low-budget horror films set opening weekend records for their respective studios

In Friday's box office news unrelated to Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, the other two major releases were also horror films. And in both cases, they frankly overperformed in terms of their smaller-scale studios. First, Immaculate opened with $2 million in 2,354 theaters for what will likely be an over/under $5 million debut weekend. While a $5 million launch for a horror film wouldn’t usually justify popping the champagne, it’s a record opening weekend for NEON. 

The indie studio’s best single weekend will remain the $5.8 million that Parasite earned on its 19th weekend in February 2020. Yes, that was right after the South Korean thriller won Best Picture at the 2020 Academy Awards. In terms of opening weekends, this tops the $3.9 million debut of Michael Mann’s Ferrari, which was much pricier (although obviously, Neon was only a domestic distributor for the $90 million Adam Driver/Penelope Cruz biopic) and far more of a “what conventional wisdom suggests will succeed” release. 

In this case, the only thing Immaculate had going for it was the presence of star (and producer) Sydney Sweeney as a nun who ends up in a strange covenant dealing with a very miraculous pregnancy. Whether this means the Anyone But You and Euphoria star is a “movie star” is open for debate. She certainly helped push an otherwise run-of-the-mill (if pretty damn good and amusingly meta… it’s all about how folks treat Sweeney on account of physical circumstances mostly beyond her control) religious horror flick to studio-specific fortune and glory. So we’ll say “added value element” for now and celebrate the relative win.

Meanwhile, IFC Films’ Late Night with the Devil earned $1.1 million on Friday, setting the stage for an over/under $3 million opening weekend. That’s, again, a record opening weekend from a studio not exactly known for breaking the bank in theaters. It’s not their top overall weekend, as My Big Fat Greek Wedding earned $11 million in its 20th weekend amid its still-unprecedented slow-crawl from $597,362 in 108 theaters in April of 2002 to a $242 million domestic total as of April 2003. It had nearly 20 weekends during which the rom-com grossed between $3 million and $11 million. There’s obviously nothing else like that in IFC’s history, or really Hollywood history give or take the first Star Wars. 

Hell, if the Colin and Cameron Cairnes-directed chiller, about a late-night host whose Halloween episode goes very poorly, opens to even $3 million, it’ll be IFC’s 15th biggest grosser ever. The frankly delightful flick, which gives longtime character actor David Dastmalchian his first “mainstream” leading role, got picked up for domestic distribution by IFC amid last year’s fall festival run, and it’ll be on Shudder (the best $55-per-year you’ll ever spend if you’re a horror junkie) in about a month. Again, most IFC releases don’t open (or play) super wide, so these huzzahs are on an obvious curve.

Their previous top opener was Chloe Okuno’s terrific stalker thriller Watcher, which opened to $826,775 in 764 theaters in June 2022 before ending with $1.9 million domestic. There was controversy over the Australian filmmakers’ use of AI for a few brief images and a counter-discourse over whether folks should be piling on a low-budget original indie flick made two years ago. Fair or not, the negative publicity seems to have raised the film’s profile. Whether all publicity is still good publicity, the controversy probably created quite a bit of “free media” awareness heading into this opening.

Again, we’re talking about a horror film that will open with $5 million and another with around $3 million. This is another “yay for studios, not-so-yay for theaters,” even if multiplexes will happily take that $8 million in revenue this weekend. 

Meanwhile, in holdover news, Legendary and WBD’s Dune Part Two earned another $4.5 million (-47%) to bring its cume to $220 million, both doubling the $108 million lifetime cume of Dune and passing the $219 million total of Wonka. It’ll earn around $16.6 million (-42%), another great hold even as it lost those Imax and (many of its) PLF screens, for a new $232 million domestic and (if the domestic/overseas split holds) around $560 million worldwide. 

Universal and DreamWorks’ Kung Fu Panda 4 earned $4.05 million (-54%), taking a slight hit from Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire as a kid-friendly movie of choice. This will likely result in a $14.5 million (-52%) weekend and a still-terrific $131 million 17-day domestic total. It should have – including an expectedly merely okay showing in China ($20 million as of Saturday after $8.8 million in previews and a lousy $2.9 million Friday) around $240 million worldwide. That’s still nearly triple its $85 million budget, with plenty left in the can. 

Lionsgate’s Mark Wahlberg-starring Arthur the King grossed $1.2 million (-60%) for a likely $4 million (-48%) second weekend and a meager $14.3 million ten-day total. Lionsgate’s Imaginary earned around $760,000 (-55%) on Friday for a likely $2.56 million (-54%) weekend and $23.4 million 17-day total. A24’s Love Lies Bleeding earned $484,420 (-56%) on its second Friday for a likely $1.6 million (-35%) weekend and $5.7 million ten-day total. That’s not much, but it might still pass the inflation-adjusted ($3.8 million in 1996, $9 million in 2022 ticket prices) domestic total of Bound. 

Angel Studios’ Cabrini will earn another $1.37 million (-51%) for a $16.1 million 17-day total, with hopes for one last boost over Easter weekend. Paramount’s Bob Marley: One Love will earn around $990,000 (-57%) in its sixth weekend for a $95.2 million domestic cume. We’ll see if Paramount can work its magic (it’s got nothing on tap between now and If on May 17) to drag the musical biopic over the $100 million mark. The Anothony Hopkins-starring biopic, One Life, will earn $960,000 in 1,009 theaters for a $3.4 million ten-day cume. We’ll see if it can get past $5.7 million to crack Bleecker Street’s (unadjusted) top ten list.