Warner Bros. may be rethinking the end of The Conjuring franchise after The Conjuring: Last Rites achieved a massive opening, one of the biggest in horror history.
The Conjuring: Last Rites opened to $84 million domestically and $194 million worldwide. That crushes the previous opening record for The Conjuring Universe that The Nun set with $53.8 million in 2018, and it’s over $60 million higher than the last proper Conjuring entry, The Devil Made Me Do It. It’s also the third-best horror opening in history behind IT Chapter One and IT Chapter Two. The movie received a B Cinemascore, which is pretty strong for a horror movie, and it has a 79% Rotten Tomatoes Popcornmeter from audiences. The marketing of this, being the final entry, may have driven the massive box office, as potentially both casual and hardcore Conjuring fans headed out to see how the franchise closed out. We’ll have to see if this movie was heavily front-loaded or if it can hold well in weekend two.
The long-awaited theatrical release of Hamilton took second place with $10.1 million. This filmed version of the musical with the original cast was supposed to debut in theaters years ago, but Disney decided to shift it to a Disney+ exclusive during COVID. It’s on the lower end compared to concert films like The Eras Tour, Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, or Michael Jackson: This Is It, so it seems like possibly most people who would have been interested in it probably already watched it at home.
With direct R-rated horror competition, Weapons had its most significant drop-off with 50% from last week, dropping to third with another $5.2 million. It now has $142.9 million domestically and $251.2 million worldwide.
Freakier Friday and Caught Stealing rounded out the top 5. Caught Stealing dropped 59% from last weekend’s opening, making another $3.8 million.
Further down the list, Light of the World took in $2.4 million and opened in ninth place. That puts it between Meet the Mormons and Journey to Bethlehem as far as faith-based movies go.
The best per-theater average went to The Conjuring: Last Rites with $22,095 in each of the 3,802 theaters it was playing in over the weekend.
