“Scream,” the fifth film in what is a revival of Wes Craven’s iconic horror franchise, made $3.5 million on Thursday night in box office preview screenings from approximately 3,000 screens beginning at 7:00 p.m. It opens on 3,661 screens this weekend.
“Scream” in just the second weekend of 2022 has a shot over its four-day Martin Luther King Day holiday weekend to dethrone “Spider-Man: No Way Home” as the No. 1 movie in America after the superhero movie dominated the box office for the last month. The horror film saw strong exit polls and a 4/5 stars score on PostTrak and could be set up for a big start to the year.
Paramount is projecting “Scream” in the $20 million range across the four-day weekend, but independent trackers suggest it could slash between $30-35 million. That would put it close to something like Universal’s “Mama,” which also opened over the MLK four-day weekend in 2013 and made $28.4 million, or alternatively “Glass,” which on MLK weekend 2019 had $3.7 million in preview screenings and opened to $40.3 million.
For some other comparisons, another recent horror revival in “Halloween Kills” made $4.85 million in its preview grosses and opened to $49.4 million in October 2021. Paramount’s own “A Quiet Place Part II” opened in May and made $4.8 million in previews and opened to $47.5 million.
Every ‘Scream’ Movie Ranked (Photos)
“Scream” is directed by the filmmaking duo Radio Silence, or Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, and it’s set 25 years after the brutal murders in Woodsboro from the original “Scream” film from 1996. The film also brings back the legacy characters played by Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette as they try to stop a new set of killers also wearing the terrifying Ghostface mask. And like the original film that’s self-aware, meta and with characters who are movie-literate, the new film has fun with the idea of this particular rebooted premise.
Newly starring in “Scream” are Melissa Barrera, Kyle Gallner, Mason Gooding, Mikey Madison, Dylan Minnette, Jenna Ortega, Jack Quaid, Marley Shelton, Jasmin Savoy Brown and Sonia Ammar.
The film is a co-production between Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group. Paramount is distributing “Scream” worldwide with Spyglass Media Group handling select territories. The “Scream” franchise rights are owned by Spyglass.
