In the end, the draw of a Nicolas Cage-led indie horror just couldn’t compete with America’s insatiable appetite for those little yellow nuggets. Despite Longlegs pulling off one of the most creative marketing campaigns in recent memory, Despicable Me 4 handily stole the box office this weekend with a massive $45 million haul. That’s just a drop in the bucket for the franchise, however, which is somehow still finding new ways to wrangle humor out of the word “banana.”
That’s not to say that Longlegs disappointed—far from it. The Oz Perkins chiller far outpaced anyone’s initial expectation, pulling in $23 million just this past weekend. That’s a new record for its distributor, Neon, and an undeniable victory for experimental horror as a whole, especially considering the film was made for less $10 million. There’s clearly still some haunting left in the air from The Blair Witch Project’s similarly “out of nowhere” rollout 25 years ago this same weekend.
The rest of this weekend’s top 10 is interestingly split right down the horror and family line. Trailing Longlegs is Inside Out 2, now in its fifth weekend and still pulling a $21 million pot. The number four spot is back to horror with A Quiet Place: Day One, followed by a disappointing opening for Fly Me To The Moon, Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson’s new space-age rom-com, which only pulled in $10 million. Maybe Gru really did steal the moon after all.
Here’s the full box office top ten, courtesy of Box Office Mojo:
1. Despicable Me 4
2. Longlegs
3. Inside Out 2
4. A Quiet Place: Day One
5. Fly Me To The Moon
6. Bad Boys: Ride Or Die
7. Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1
8. MaXXXine
9. Sound Of Hope: The Story Of Possum Trot
10. Indian 2