‘Scream’ Box Office Passes ‘Spider-Man’ With a $35M Holiday Debut

In hopes of reviving the slasher pic, the classic horror franchise Scream makes its comeback this weekend, during the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday. During the four-day weekend, the film projected a gross of $34 million, enough to dethrone Spider-Man: No Way Home. The project was also good enough to revive the classic slasher franchise for Paramount and Spyglass, who partnered for the reboot.

Scream’s domestic, three-day, opening weekend gross is an estimated $30 million, a strong showing during the pandemic and the Omicron surge in COVID-19 cases. The final numbers for the film will be released Tuesday; Monday’s estimates are expected to come in slightly lower than Sunday’s projections.

Overseas, Scream grossed $18 million from 50 markets for its global debut of $52 million, well above its modest $25 million production budget. The U.K. led with $3.4 million.

Leading the moviegoers is a younger crowd, the ones who have been most inclined to return to theatres to thank for its performance. Males led ticket buyers, but the male to female ratio was a close 53 percent versus 47 percent. A 67 percent of ticket buyers were between 18 and 34.

Scream opened best in the western U.S., with the south and the northeast coming in under the midwest and the southeast. With theatres in Ontario and Quebec closed, Canada came in at a meager 1.5 percent of the market share on total locations.

It has been 25 years since the late Wes Craven’s original film hit the big screen. Scream is the fifth film in the series and a direct sequel to the 2011 film Scream 4. It is the first not to be directed by Craven. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett share directing duties.

The film stars the franchise mainstays Courteney Cox and Neve Campbell and follows a new Ghostface killer though still voiced by Roger L. Jackson.

The film led Spider-Man: No Way Home to fall the second spot in its fifth weekend with an estimated four-day haul of $26 million. Today, the blockbuster will biome as one of four films to ever cross the $700 million mark for the domestic box office.