Box Office: ‘Scream’ Set to Dethrone ‘Spider-Man’ With $36 Million Holiday Weekend Debut

Do you like scary movies? North American audiences still do, even as most other theatrical releases continue to struggle amid a pandemic. “Scream” is the latest horror film to make a sizable impression at the domestic box office, with an opening weekend that should finally dethrone “Spider-Man: No Way Home” after the Marvel entry’s four-week reign in the top slot.

Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media’s “Scream,” the fifth installment in the horror franchise and the first in over a decade, grossed $13.35 million on Friday from 3,664 locations. The studio projects that the horror film should rake in a solid $36 million over the four-day Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, more than enough to land at No. 1 for the weekend. What’s more, the thrifty “requel” only cost $25 million to produce, a number that the release should easily rocket past before the weekend is out. Not too shabby for a January release unleashed on the moviegoing public amid a colossal spike of COVID-19 and its more transmissible omicron variant. “Scream” is evidence that audiences will still roll out to theaters during the pandemic, especially for franchise appointment cinema targeting a demographic of younger viewers.

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