Long Range Forecast: Can SINNERS Bring New Life to the April Box Office?

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Long Range Forecast — April 18, 2025

Sinners | Warner Bros.

Domestic Opening Weekend Range: $40M – $50M

Supernatural horror thriller Sinners reunites director Ryan Coogler with star Michael B. Jordan, a collaboration that has launched major franchises like Creed ($29.6M domestic opening, $109.7M domestic total) and Black Panther ($404M domestic opening, $700M domestic total). Trailer views suggest positive interest for this title, but it will need to build more awareness ahead of release to create a bigger impact on the market.

Based on an original script by Coogler, the film lacks the built-in fanbase that Creed and Black Panther enjoyed as new installments in established franchises with cross-generational appeal. That said, the pair’s collaboration has been fruitful enough—and their respective profiles high enough—that Warner Bros. shouldn’t have too much of an uphill battle convincing audiences (whether moviegoers in general or the niche horror-fan demo) to come out, whether on opening weekend or (should positive word-of-mouth develop) in chase weeks.

An opening weekend haul on the higher end of our $30M – $50M range puts Sinners in the neighborhood of 2018’s A Quiet Place ($50.2M domestic opening, $188M domestic total), also a horror/thriller based on original IP that came out in April, albeit closer to the beginning of the month. One key difference between the two films is that A Quiet Place was rated PG-13, while Sinners boasts an R rating, which could serve to limit its box office potential. Among other R-rated horror titles, 2023’s Evil Dead Rise, like Sinners a mid-April Warner Bros. release, opened to $24.5M and topped out at $68.7M.

Looking outside of April horror releases, Jordan Peele’s Nope ($44.3M domestic opening, $123.2M domestic total), Get Out ($33.3M domestic opening, $176M domestic total), and Us ($71.1M domestic opening, $175M domestic total) were all supernatural horror titles based on original stories, leaving the studio (Universal for Peele) with the challenge of deciding how much the marketing should reveal and how much it should hold back.

Horror as a genre has been hit-or-miss so far this year; Christmas release Nosferatu ($21.6M domestic opening, $95.6M domestic total) was able to capture the attention of general audiences, while Universal’s Wolf Man ($10.8M domestic opening, $20.7M domestic total) fizzled at launch and Neon’s The Monkey ($14M domestic opening, $36.1 domestic total as of March 21) looks mostly to have connected with the horror crowd. (Understandable, given it’s about about a cursed toy monkey that kills people in increasingly gruesome ways.)

Tracking Updates [as of March 21]