Universal and DreamWorks Animation’s ‘Spirit Untamed’ will earn around $7 million in its opening weekend.
Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema’s The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It was the top movie at the domestic box office on Friday. The $39 million, R-rated horror sequel, again starring Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine Warren but directed by Michael Chaves instead of James Wan, earned $9.84 million on day one, easily topping the (estimated) $6 million second-Friday gross of A Quiet Place Part II. This sets the stage for a likely $24-$26 million opening weekend. The film earned mixed-positive reviews and a B+ from Cinemascore, while the whole “available on HBO Max for the first 31 days” variable obviously played a part. Under normal circumstances, a debut essentially 35% below the $41 million launch of The Conjuring in 2013 and the $40 million debut of The Conjuring 2 in 2016 would be slightly disappointing. Even absent Covid-specific variables, it wouldn’t automatically be a surprise. Annabelle Comes Home, which also prominently featured the stars of the Conjuring films, opened with “just” $20 million over the Fri-Sun portion of a $31 million Wed-Sun debut frame in summer 2019. That was indeed well below the over/under $35 million debuts in 2014 and 2017 of the previous Annabelle movies and the $55 million launch of The Nun in 2018. That The Nun was both the biggest global grosser of the franchise ($366 million) and arguably the worst film in the series probably didn’t help, as it’s possible that Annabelle Comes Home (my favorite of the bunch) suffered as a result. So, yeah, it’s another “ Saw VI bombs because Saw V was terrible” circumstance.
