‘Scream’ roared back to life this weekend after a mostly-disliked ‘Scream 3’ and a mostly ignored ‘Scream 4.’
Scream (aka Scream 5) pulled something of a box office miracle this long Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. The R-rated slasher movie topped the charts with a robust $30.6 million Fri-Sun/$35 million Fri-Mon domestic debut. Sans inflation, that’s just above the $33 million Fri-Sun opening of Scream 2 ($65 million adjusted for inflation) in 1997 and the $34 million Fri-Sun launch of Scream 3 ($57 million adjusted) in 2000. Heck, it’s just shy of the entire $38 million domestic gross of Scream 4 in 2011. That’s the strange thing. Most audiences didn’t care for Scream 3 ($89 million domestic and $162 million worldwide total aside) in early 2000. And they outright ignored Scream 4 ($38 million/$98 million) in early 2011. In terms of a major franchise bouncing back sans a reboot or a major retcon, I’ve frankly never seen this before. Yes, the James Bond series had its highs ( Thunderball) and lows ( Man with the Golden Gun), but even GoldenEye (following the commercially underwhelming Timothy Dalton duo) was a very soft reboot. Even The Fast Saga offered up a halfway decent sequel (the underrated 2 Fast 2 Furious) and an outright spin-off (the now almost overrated Tokyo Drift) before getting all the original cast back together for the franchise-reviving Fast & Furious. Audiences liked Godzilla less than critics and didn’t show up for Godzilla: King of the Monsters only to comparatively flock to Godzilla Vs. Kong. However, that newbie-friendly sequel had “two characters you know and like fighting.” But Scream was “just another Scream sequel.” In terms of a straightforward revival following a DOA earlier installment, a franchise relaunch mostly occurring because the rights changed hands, this relative level of success is arguably unprecedented. As for “what went right,’ Paramount made sure awareness was high, which is harder than ever when fewer people watch network television/basic cable (fewer eyeballs for commercials) and non-tentpoles in theaters (fewer captive viewers for trailers). We got exactly one theatrical trailer and just a few television and online spots, which were spoiler-lite without shrouding the film in mystery.
