Jordan's Peele's latest conjured up a scary good success rate at the box office on Friday night, taking a whopping $29.06 million into the weekend. This is counting the roughly $7.4 million that the film earned on Thursday evening, meaning that MonkeyPaw gained 25% of its 'opening day' on Thursday, but that also means that fans rushed to theaters as soon as humanly possible to watch a black cast in an original horror movie the minute it became available. As Forbes reported earlier, US, an original, R-rated horror movie with a mostly black cast, just scored the biggest opening day in history for a live-action original. Inflation notwithstanding, it earned more on Friday than the opening day ($26.7m) and the second Saturday ($28.272m) of James Cameron’s AVATAR. US just scored the seventh-biggest single day for any wholly original theatrical release, sans inflation, even if you count animated movies.
Being a horror movie — especially an original one — means that there's no way Peele's follow-up to GET OUT would normally score as much at the box office as James Cameron's AVATAR, especialy since the film is arguably not as audience friendly as the aforementioned directorial debut. However, so far, US is doing some pretty impressive stuff its opening weekend.
If the movie does as well this weekend as oh, say Corin Hardy's THE NUN, we’re looking at a $70 million debut weekend for the $20m-budgeted release. That would make US the third-biggest R-rated horror debut ever behind only 2018's HALLOWEEN ($76m) and Andy Muschietti's IT ($123m). So too would a multiplier only as strong as David Gordon Green's HALLOWEEN (2.3 x its $33m Friday), which would still give US an over/under $65m debut weekend. That would make it, even accounting for inflation, the second-biggest slasher movie ever behind Green's HALLOWEEN.
Newly released as Peele's sophomore feature, US tells the story of how a family's serenity turns to chaos when a group of doppelgängers begins to terrorize them. Starring BLACK PANTHER's Lupita Nyong'o in a fiercely commanding role — well, two of them — the film premiered at SXSW in Austin, Texas to rave reviews across the board, quickly garnering up rumors of Oscar buzz and all-timer status. No matter what happens now, it's clear that Jordan Peele is not only a phenomenal filmmaker, but also one of our most important voices in the horror genre. It's a joy watching him thrive.
US is out in theaters now — run to your nearest cineplex and help this horror masterpiece earn the box office status it deserves.