Red Door also reps the best start in the last two years for a PG-13 horror movie. More pom-poms for Sony: their Marvel Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse just outstripped Disney/Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 as the highest-grossing movie of the summer, $357.6M to $357.5M.
For Blumhouse, Red Door is its 16th title to open at No. 1. While tentpoles get all the glory in the post-Covid marketplace, Blumhouse continues to deliver.
Sony gets props here for finally getting their hands around a franchise they’ve always had a financial stake in. I hear Sony Motion Picture Group Chairman and CEO Tom Rothman selected the brilliant, daredevil release date here in between Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and ahead of the Tom Cruise summer box office cyclone, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning.
Talk about bravado: Typically studios avoid going in the wake of a big Disney movie, ala Marvel or Lucasfilm. However, rival studio brass often hear when the competition is coming up greatly short months before a pic’s opening. Either that, or box office history was telling: despite its huge $100M+ opening, the less-than-fan-fave Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull only held on to No. 1 for one weekend back in 2008, the pic unseated in weekend 2 by….Sex and the City, $57M to $44.7M.
Rothman was adamant that Red Door make its release date. Together with Sony Co-President Josh Greenstein, they knew they had a bigger hit on their hands with the latest installment of this jump scare movie than any other Insidious title.
What’s the difference between this Insidious and all others? It brings the original cast back together, including Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Ty Simpkins, Leigh Whannell and Lin Shaye. Making that happen was Wilson himself, who makes his feature directorial debut here.
Sony originally bought U.S. rights on the first film out of TIFF, but ended up making a distribution deal with Film District to release in the U.S. They handled the first two pics until they were absorbed by Universal’s Focus Features. Sony had foreign (except for UK and Spain) on Insidious 2 and 3. On Insidious: The Last Key, Sony got all foreign rights, plus full ownership of the IP, too. By Red Door, they nabbed all global rights.
The Insidious franchise is as alive as other long-running horror franchises; Saw V and the fifth Scream, putting up $30M starts.
Similar to Last Key, Insidious is able to overpower lackluster critical scores (36%) and so-so audience scores (3 1/2 stars, 72% on Screen Engine/Comscore’s Postrak) to deliver at the box office. No matter what the response is here, it’s clear moviegoers are bewitched enough to get in the car and go. It’s a total jump scare movie with great set pieces.
Some 38% went to see Red Door because it’s part of a franchise they love, while another 38% went because they love horror movies. What encouraged the audience to go and see Red Door the most in the pic’s marketing campaign, more than its trailer? PostTrak audiences said it was Red Door‘s social media campaign.
RelishMix says that social media chatter on Red Door was indeed upbeat: “…striking power chords in the horror community with long-time franchise fans who are packed and ready for a return, fueled by a potent blend of anticipation and nostalgia. The reassembly of the original cast is met with excitement, ‘The dad still looks the same!’ Horror-hard cores are praising the fear-fest that blends real-world chills with a nod to past terrors.”
Red Door‘s social media universe across TikTok, YouTube views, Facebook, IG, and Twitter is weighed at 176.9M, which is ahead of Halloween Kills (147.3M), A Quiet Place II (170M), Halloween Ends (143.1M), Scream (126.2M) and Insidious: Last Key (114.7M). “Digital social awareness stats on Insidious tracks just above normal levels for a heathy set of five horror franchises by 4% across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok combined — including Scream, Halloween, Quiet Place, previous Insidious’ and Annabelle — with a solid social network for the movie with 4.9M fans, plus the Blumhouse effect with 2.8M fans,” reports RelishMix.
Muy bien, Sony, for opening a movie in a summer marketplace sans late night talk shows.
Red Door, like Last Key, was still female heavy at 52%, but a little less so, as the previous chapter drew 57%. The Insidious audience got a little older: 51% were under 25 vs. 68% on Last Chapter. Nonetheless, the tried-and-true 18-34 devoted moviegoing base showed up here at 67% in what was a very diverse crowd, with 41% Hispanic and Latino attending, 26% Caucasian, 16% Black, and 12% Asian.
Red Door played strongest in the South Central and West, and we hear that $1M is coming from PLFs. This despite the fact that Indy kept most of those screens and Imax. AMC Burbank is the highest-grossing theater in the U.S. for Red Door, with $44K so far.
Credit: Anthony D'Alessandro, Deadline, July 9 2023