Jordan Peele’s name alone is enough to bring in moviegoers, putting him in elite company at the box office. What’s more impressive is that all it took was 2017’s “Get Out,” a social thriller, to achieve that status.
As a follow-up to the critical and financial success of 2017’s “Get Out,” which debuted at $33 million and ended its domestic run with a mighty $176 million, Peele once again electrified the box office with 2019’s “Us,” which opened at $70 million and ended it’s North American run with an impressive $175 million. Moviegoers will buy pretty much anything Peele is selling to them.
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The director’s next nightmare vision, “Nope,” starring Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, and Steven Yeun, opens this Friday, and all signs point to it becoming a smashing financial success.
Jordan Peele’s ‘Nope’ Will be a Blockbuster Hit
In its opening weekend, the science fiction horror film from Universal Pictures is projected to earn $45 million to $55 million from 3,700 theatres across North America.
While that would be a good opening weekend for a horror movie, there is optimism that “Nope” will do even better. Given that Peele has been undervalued by predicted box office receipts in the past, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Tracking services predicted that “Us” would have a beginning in the $35 million to $40 million range, similar to that of “Get Out.”
It was expected that Peele’s sophomore film would open to around $80 million in North America, but “Us” actually did nearly double that. Even though Universal is hoping for a debut of $50 million or more, it would come as no surprise if ticket sales surpassed that mark in the opening weekend.
The $68 million price tag for “Nope” dwarfs the budgets of R-rated horror films like “Get Out” ($4.5 million) and “Us” ($20 million). As a result, it will need a larger budget than previous films by Peele in order to break even. Box office receipts for “Get Out” and “Us” combined to total $255 million worldwide.
Experts predict that the reviews currently under embargo will significantly impact the box office during the opening weekend. The plot of “Nope,” like those of Peele’s previous films, is unknown, which only adds to the film’s buzz. Kaluuya and Palmer play brothers who make a strange and terrifying discovery while camping in a California gulch.
After the success of “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” “Minions: The Rise of Gru,” “Elvis,” and “Top Gun: Maverick,” studios and theatre owners are hoping that “Nope” will continue the strong summer season. Those box office successes have helped bring in $2.5 billion for the summer box office between May 1 and July 17, per data from Comscore.
These numbers are 162% higher than the same period in 2021 when theatres were still trying to recover from the devastating effects of COVID-19, and only 10.2% lower than the same period in 2019 when the massive success of “Avengers: Endgame” propelled the summer box office.
Though “Nope” is the only new nationwide release this weekend, Hollywood is hopeful that the remaining summer slate, including Warner Bros.’ family film “DC League of Super-Pets” (July 29), Brad Pitt’s “Bullet Train” (August 5), and Idris Elba’s “Beast” (August 19), will surprise audiences.
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