The Real Reason Why Horror Movies Are Still Killing It At The Box Office – Looper

Despite the highly contagious Delta variant leading to a spike in COVID cases, audiences braved the threat to see "Candyman" during its opening weekend. By all indicators the opening was a massive success, taking in more than $27 million in worldwide ticket sales against an estimated $25 million budget (via CNBC). Unless theater owners surprisingly close their doors again, the Nia DaCosta-directed horror thriller is certain to be a hit.

"Horror movies are an accountant's, and studio executive's, dream with a huge upside of profit potential due to their inherent cost effectiveness; you don't need to break the bank to make a killer scary movie and the box-office results for the genre particularly during the pandemic have been most impressive," Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore, told CNBC.

On the flip side, big budget films continue to struggle, even in normally bankable genres. CNBC said thebudget of director James Gunn's supervillain movie "The Suicide Squad"had a production budget of$185 million, but has only grossed $154.5 million in theaters to date (the film also debuted on HBO Max the same day). On the superhero side, Disney and Marvel Studio's "Black Widow" has made $370 million worldwide against a $200 million production budget and $100 million marketing budget. Exacerbating that situation, of course, is star Scarlett Johansson's lawsuit against Disney, claiming the film's simultaneous release on the Disney+ streaming service caused her tens of millions of dollars in profit earnings. So far, Disney has only reported that it made $60 million from the film's opening weekend from the film's Premier Access option on Disney+.

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The Real Reason Why Horror Movies Are Still Killing It At The Box Office - Looper