Longlegs, the highly regarded horror film starring Nicolas Cage and Maika Monroe, stunned the North American box office over the weekend to open on an estimated $22.6m record bow for Neon.
Osgood Perkins’s film about an FBI agent on the trail of a satanic serial killer may not have won the box office weekend – that accolade went to Universal/Illumination’s Despicable Me 4 with a $44.7m hold – but second place against a summer tentpole is impressive.
Further, the opening weekend result has revived the horror genre and delivered a timely fillip to box office in a difficult year.
Neon acquired Longlegs at EFM in 2023 and said it paid less than $10m and the same amount for marketing. The result, the company said, was the highest debut by an independent horror film in the last decade and the only one to cross $20m – considerably ahead of early tracking.
Prior to this release, Neon said the highest independent horror box office came from Relativity’s Woman In Black 2 on $15m in January 2015, UAR’s Child’s Play on $14m in June 2019, and A24’s Hereditary, on $13.5m in June 2018.
Dave Caplan’s C2 Motion Picture Group financed Longlegs, which played on 2,510 screens and grossed $10m on Friday, $7.2m on Saturday, and $5.4m on Sunday. The film also delivered Cage’s highest opening since National Treasure in 2007 and ranks as the highest horror debut of 2024 so far.
Neon built a marketing campaign that launched with a cryptic teaser in January, followed by others as well as posters and coded messages in local newspapers. In June, a billboard appeared in Los Angeles listing a phone number which, when dialled, triggered a recorded message from Cage in character as the eponymous monster. Neon said the number received more than 930,000 calls. The company will release Perkins’s next two films, Keeper and The Monkey.
Elsewhere in the charts Despicable Me 4 climbed to a highly promising $211.1m after two weekends in release, pushing the Despicable Me/Minions universe past $5bn worldwide. Despicable Me 3 finished on $264.6m and over $1bn worldwide in 2017.
Disney/Pixar’s Inside Out 2 ranked third on $20.7m in its fifth weekend for a $572.6m running total.
Apple Original Films’ period romantic comedy Fly Me To The Moon starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum stumbled in a $10m debut at number five through distribution partner Sony Pictures.
The theatrical release for a title reported to have cost more than $100m will not bother Apple too much given its $3.5tn market cap, and is more of a ploy to entice viewers to its streaming platform.
Paramount’s A Quiet Place: Day One climbed one place to number four in its third session, adding $11.8m for $116.2m. Focus Features’ drama Touch from Baltasar Kormakur arrived at number 11 on $470,000 from 316 sites.
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