EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros can get down on its knees and thank the Almighty, for alas, the studio has its seventh No 1 opener this weekend in New Line’s The Conjuring: The Last Rites. Get this, it’s Warners’ fourth straight No. 1 opening for a horror film. We’re hearing from sources that Thursday night’s previews, which kicked off at 3 p.m., are heading for a saintly $7 million-$8 million. That’s easily bound to be a preview record for a Conjuring franchise movie (read on), and definitely puts the Michael Chaves-directed R-rated movie from Safran Company and Atomic Monster deep into the $40M-plus Friday-Monday range.
We’ll have more for you on Friday AM, but Conjuring: Last Rites previews are bigger than Sinnners ($4.7M), Final Destination Bloodlines ($5.5M), Weapons ($5.7M) and even The Nun ($5.4M); Chaves previously directed The Nun II ($3.1M). Of these, Final Destination Bloodlines and The Nun opened to north of $50M, the latter owning the biggest domestic opening in The Conjuring franchise at $53.8M. All in, the Conjuring universe including the core films and Nun and Annabelle spinoffs counts $2.3 billion at global box office, the highest-grossing horror franchise ever.
No Rotten Tomatoes audience score yet, but critics aren’t thankful for Last Rites giving it a 58% Rotten, which is not far from the previous Lorraine and Ed Warren paranormal installment, 2021’s The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, at 56%. That sequel’s grosses were siphoned from a theatrical day-and-date release on HBO Max, when Warners was employing project popcorn during a time when cinemas were recovering and reopening from Covid. Devil Made Me Do It bowed to $24.1M domestic and ended its run at $65.6M stateside, $206M worldwide.
Back in May, Warner Bros opened New Line’s Final Destination Bloodlines to a franchise domestic record of $51.6M, the movie becoming the top-grossing one in that horror series with north of $138M stateside and $301M worldwide.
