The latest January horror release is upon us from Blumhouse Productions. The long-awaited M3GAN is finally in theaters, which showcases a modern take on Child’s Play with a PG-13 horror. The film has opened around 3,400 theaters in North America, and it’s opening to quite a strong start. The film was projected to make around $17M to $20M, an impressive start on a tiny $12M budget.
As such, the film will likely make its money back internationally in the coming weeks and has a good chance of picking up the pace over the weekend if it ends up quite popular with audiences. The PG-13 rating could end up pushing the film further at the box office.
As of now, the film has pulled in $2.75M in its Thursday previews, which sets it on the perfect path to reach its projects. Though it won’t beat Avatar: The Way of Water as the film has dominated theaters since its pre-Christmas release. The film is expected to have a soft 50% drop to around $30M, which would keep it at the top spot.
M3GAN is playing the usual January counterprogramming strategy, as it’s generally a dead month for releases and has become quite popular for horror films. Most projects avoided Avatar‘s release in the Holidays, and this became quite profitable for the company, but M3GAN is hopefully going to start a strong 2023 release schedule that would push the box office to its usual legs from back in 2019. It seems unlikely it’ll revive that quickly, but each year the box office has been showing some growth.
Source: Variety
