A very good movie made a very good amount of money this weekend.
John Krasinski's A Quiet Place bagged $50 million to land at No. 1 for this weekend’s U.S. box office ranking. This haul is notable for a multitude of reasons, including the fact that this is only the most recent example of a well-budgeted horror film defying the genre’s expectations to the tune of copious profits.
Producer Andrew Form credits the bulk of the film's success to its shrewd approach to SXSW hype-building. "The buzz that we were able to generate from the screening before 1,200 people and critics really launched the film," Form told the Hollywood Reporter Monday.
Adding in international earnings, A Quiet Place is already standing on $71 million after just a few days in wide release. Considering its $17 million budget, the future of Krasinski as a formidable director seems pretty certain. Previously, the Office alum helmed Brief Interviews With Hideous Men and The Hollars; each played on a fraction of A Quiet Place's 3,500 screens.
Maybe this also means we're going to get another great year of horror on the heels of 2017 instaclassics like It and the Oscar-winning Get Out, the latter of which marked Jordan Peele's directorial debut. With an even smaller budget ($4.5 million) than Krasinski's A Quiet Place,Get Out went on to amass more than $250 million worldwide. Word of mouth helped Peele's film immensely, and—considering the highly discussable content of A Quiet Place—Krasinski can likely expect his slice of horror to have similar legs at the box office.
