‘A Quiet Place’ Now Louder Than ‘Get Out’ As Paramount Rebounds At The B.O.
In the midst of the Viacom-CBS merger melee, Paramount Pictures is turning itself around and can celebrate the fact that their low budget horror thriller A Quiet Place has bested Universal/Blumhouse’s Get Out at the domestic box office, $176.5M to $176M. And the John Krasinski-directed movie which stars himself and his wife Emily Blunt isn’t slowing down eight weekends after its release with a recent 3-day of $3.9M at 2,327 locations. Next to other horror thrillers stateside, A Quiet Place is arguably the fifth best after It ($327.5M), The Sixth Sense ($293.5M), Jaws ($260M), and The Exorcist ($232.9M).
In addition this past weekend, Paramount outstripped the $9M-$10M tracking for its older-femme skewing title Book Club which turned in a $13.58M opening; not too shabby for a movie that the studio acquired U.S./UK/France rights on for a reported $10M at last year’s AFM. Titles for the 50+ crowd can sometimes see multiples near 4x their opening.
Also, during the new regime of studio chairman and CEO Jim Gianopulos, Paramount pushed the Will Ferrell-Mark Wahlberg holiday comedy Daddy’s Home 2 to $104M stateside, a rare box office benchmark nowadays for comedies. In the wake of the late Brad Grey-Rob Moore era at the studio, the latter days of which were weighed down in deflated tentpoles likes Star Trek Beyond and Jack Reacher: Never Go Back and flat-out fails like Ben-Hur and Zoolander 2, the new Paramount is aiming to make well-rounded, smart-budgeted event title choices in its future slates. Year to date for Jan. 1-May 20 versus the same period a year ago, Paramount is +41% at the domestic B.O. with $274M according to ComScore.
True, Get Out and A Quiet Place are two different types of movies, one a socially conscious thriller, the other a sci-fi monster movie, however, they were both made respectively for a song at $4.5M and $17M, and are titles that have turned the genre on its ahead; one with gender politics, the other a cinematic force of silence and sound. A Quiet Place is already ahead of Get Out on a global basis, $301.1M to $255M. A Quiet Place, co-produced by Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes, made its world premiere at hipster festival SXSW alongside other movies such as Warner Bros./Village Roadshow’s Steven Spielberg movie Ready Player One. Early tracking had A Quiet Place opening lower than Ready Player, but the former bested the latter with a three-day debut of $50.2M to $41.7M (both opened on two different weekends). Gianopulos announced at CinemaCon that a sequel for A Quiet Place is already in the works.
On deck for Paramount is Johnny Knoxville’s R-rated comedy Action Point on June 1, Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout on July 27, Bad Robot’s horror pic Overlord on Oct. 26, Tyler Perry’s The List on Nov. 2, and Transformers spinoff Bumblebee on Dec. 21.
Related stories
CBS Slams "Disloyal" Shari Redstone In Attempt To Toss Bylaw Change That Could Lead To Viacom Merger
CBS Prepares To Challenge Last-Minute Bylaw Change Ahead Of Vote To Reduce Shari Redstone's Control
Pamela Kaufman Upped To President Of Viacom/Nickelodeon Global Consumer Products
Get more from Deadline.com: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Newsletter
