This weekend, the Christmas-themed horror threequel “Terrifier 3,” beat out the strong third weekend of Universal/DreamWorks’ “The Wild Robot” and the historically poor second weekend of Warner Bros.’ “Joker: Folie a Deux” to take the No. 1 spot at the box office with an $18.3 million opening weekend from 2,516 theaters.
It’s the fourth-highest opening weekend for a horror film this year, topping movies like Universal/Blumhouse’s “Speak No Evil” and “Night Swim” as well as Lionsgate’s “Never Let Go” and “The Strangers — Chapter 1.”
It’s a weekend that has floored Chris McGurk, CEO of the company that distributed “Terrifier 3,” Cineverse. Formerly known as Cinedigm and owner of dozens of bespoke streaming services and media companies, including the popular horror media group Bloody Disgusting, Cineverse spent just $500,000 out of pocket on marketing “Terrifier 3,” a slasher sequels that resurrects Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) for more gory antics, on top of the mere $2 million production budget for the film.
“David beat Goliath,” McGurk told TheWrap on Sunday. “Even if we had just made $5 million, we would have had a home run. $10 million would be the grand slam of grand slams. But to actually do over $18 million and to win the weekend amongst all those studio tentpoles is just really unbelievable. It’s another really great shot in the arm for independent film to see a little movie like this that was produced at that budget level and marketed the way we marketed it win the day.”
McGurk talked about the years of work by the Cineverse and Bloody Disgusting that went into turning “Terrifier” into a new hit slasher series, as well as trying to expand interest in Art the Clown’s gory antics beyond the most hardcore of horror fans:
“We were lucky enough to buy two horror assets over the years. One was Bloody Disgusting in 2021, and they’re the biggest name in online horror with editorial, reviews, festivals, that kind of thing, all done by great people who really understand the horror business. About seven months before that, we bought a streaming channel called ScreamBox, which I think is the number two horror streaming channel behind Shudder.“
„Terrifier 3“ was produced on the tiny budget own only $ 250.000 and was supposed to be only a small production for streaming – the success in cinemas comes as a huge surprise.
