Paranormal Activity 3 smashes the box office
I’m checking this out tomorrow night but it’s worth noting that something odd happened at the box office this weekend. Paranormal Activity 3 apparently smashed it. It’s rare to see a horror film do this much business in a single weekend, let alone the third in franchise it’s critics call a one-trick pony.
To put this in perspective, let’s take a look at the first 3 films in the Saw franchise, which most people agree is the dominant horror franchise of the past decade.
The first Saw made $103 million worldwide with $55 of that coming domestically. Paranormal Activity made $193 million worldwide with $108 being domestic. Also consider that PA was a word of mouth flick not given a traditional wide release immediately.
Saw, of course, was a huge hit and its sequel showed that. The sequel grabbed about $148 million worldwide, with $87 of that being domestic. It’s opening weekend was about $32 million, large for a horror film, for sure. So how did PA2 stack up to that? Quite nicely. The sequel grabbed $177 million worldwide, nearly thirty million more than the highly decorated Saw 2. It also stacked up just about even domestically with about $85 million. It’s opening weekend put Saw 2 to shame with a haul of $41 million.
The verdict is still out on how well PA3 will do. After all, it’s only been out for two days. It could drop like an anvil next weekend. But if the $50 million dollar opening weekend holds, that puts it well ahead of Saw 3‘s opening weekend of $34 million (which was about the same as Saw 2′s opening with higher ticket prices. Part of the phenomenon of Saw was it’s quirky ability to open with complete stability over and over, which helped make it a venerable franchise). It wasn’t until the fourth film that Saw began seeing noticeable diminishing returns (though still hugely profitable in movie terms). To put PA3′s opening weekend into even more perspective, Green Lantern opened at $53 million. So it’s operating in superhero film range.
Let’s also not forget that though the budgets for both franchises are extremely small (part of the reason they are successes regardless of diminishing returns), the PA films are dramatically different from the Saw films. The first Saw and PA were dead even, right around a million dollars. PA2 stayed around that range whereas Saw 2 moved into the $4 million range. After that, the Saw films average $10 million for their budgets (with Saw 3-D coming in at $20). The Saw films also had massive marketing campaigns that probably added at least double to those production budgets, if not more. I think it’s safe to say, as of now anyway, that the PA films have been more successful financially.
So what am I saying? Well, it appears just based on numbers that Paranormal Activity could well be on its way to usurping Saw as the dominant horror franchise of this century. It has a long way to go. A lot will depend on how well PA3 holds over the next month. Is it front loaded, or is it genuinely scaring the crap out of people to keep word of mouth going? It would also have to hold up over four more movies. Can it make it? I dunno. But I was kind of taken aback when I actually looked at the numbers and compared the two franchises. Is Paranormal Activity actually more popular than Saw? To me, that’s weird to think about. The default answer would be “Of course not” but right now, I think the answer is “yes”. I don’t know if it will have the longevity of Saw, but it’s certainly on its way. There are so many variables (changing ticket prices, weekend competition, release dates, the zeitgeist), but the numbers right now seem to tell the tale. My review of PA3 on Monday’s Splattercast, by the way.
P.S. Can we please get an actual sequel to Paranormal Activity? I want to know what happened to Katie (and her boobs) at the end of the first!
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