FREAKY (2020): Kathryn Newton’s Horror Flick Dominates Box Office

Kathryn Newton’s Freaky Dominates Box Office

Freaky, a body-swap horror movie from Universal Pictures and Blumhouse Productions, topped the box office this weekend debuting at $3.7 million.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, when nearly all new releases have been postponed, Freaky‘s ticket sales earned it the top slot on U.S. charts, playing on 2,472 screens in North America all together. Overseas, the film took in $1.9 million from 20 international markets making for a global total of $5.6 million.

The film stars Vince Vaughn as a serial killer and Kathryn Newton as a high school teen who accidentally switches bodies with Vaughn on Friday the Thirteenth. Director Christopher Landon, the writer of Disturbia, and three Paranormal Activity sequels and director of Happy Death Day, directed the film, which received mostly positive reviews and cost $6 million to make.

“It’s going to be very profitable,” says media analyst David A. Gross, who runs Franchise Entertainment Research. “With the pandemic surging and additional U.S. theaters closing, this is a good opening.”

Jim Orr, president of domestic distribution at Universal Pictures, said Freaky will have a long run in theaters given that it does not face much in the way of competition. It’s been a similar situation with many films released during the pandemic. “It’ll have much longer legs than the horror genre might normally produce”, said Orr. He praised Universal’s collaboration with Blumhouse, which is known for making small budget thrillers. “Christopher Landon has an amazing touch for these films,” Orr added. “He can blend horror and comedy like no other.”

Universal has released a relatively large number of movies during the pandemic, in large part because of their deal with AMC Theaters which allows them to stream new titles on video on demand within 17 days of their theatrical release. In return AMC gets a cut of the digital profits. Universal has only released smaller, less financially risky titles given the unpredictability in the market and plans to save its biggest projects — like the Fast and Furious sequel F9 and Jurassic World: Dominion — until the pandemic is under better control. Regardless, theaters are desperate to screen anything they can get their hands on and as such will be showing The Croods: A New Age and the Tom Hanks starrer News of the World on November 25th and December 25th respectively.

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