The Blumhouse and Universal feature Night Swim grossed $1.5M in Thursday Box Office previews at 2,750 theaters.
Bryce McGuire’s horror flick stars Wyatt Russell as retired baseball player Ray Waller who moves into a new home with his family after being diagnosed with a terminal illness. Unbeknownst to the Waller family, the house swimming pool holds a malevolent past that comes back to haunt them. Kerry Condon, Amélie Hoeferle and Gavin Warren also star.
Adapted from a short film in 2014 McGuire made in collaboration with Rod Blackhurst, Night Swim is the first 2024 film release with an outlook in the $8-$12M spectrum. The film is produced by horror veteran James Wan, creator of the original Saw. Writer-director Bryce McGuire talks to EW about working with Wan and his influence on the film. He says, “This whole thing happened because James saw the short film, and then James was swimming in his pool that night, doing the freestyle, looking over his left shoulder, right shoulder, left shoulder, and he thought he saw the kind of silhouette [from the short] standing next to the pool, and it freaked him out. [He] came to meet me the next day and told me the story. When you scare James Wan, something’s going right.”
Unfortunately, the horror flick wasn’t received well by critics with a rotten tomatometer of 27% and its low earnings won’t be enough to top Wonka, which led previews with $2.5M and earned over $170M as a total in ticket sales. Then there’s Warner Bros’ Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, which had a start of $1.9M and a total earning of $87.5M. Illumination/Universal’s Migration led previews with $2.09M and grossed $65M domestically.
The other Christmas releases, Sony’s Anyone But You ($32M), Warner Bros.’ The Color Purple ($49.8M), A24’s The Iron Claw ($18M) and Amazon MGM’s The Boys in the Boat ($27.8M), also compete in theaters.
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