Long Range Forecast: Can SPEAK NO EVIL or THE KILLER’S GAME Attract Crossover Audiences?

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Long Range Forecast — September 13, 2024

Speak No Evil | Universal
Domestic Opening Weekend Range: $12M – $20M

The third of a planned four movies slated to come out in 2024 from genre mainstay Blumhouse, Speak No Evil is highly unlikely to reach the box office heights of some of the production company’s previous heavy hitters—but don’t count it out as a solid mid-range success in the run-up to Halloween.

So far, this year has been much less lucrative than last year for Blumhouse, which achieved crossover success with 2023 releases M3GAN ($30.4M domestic opening, $95.1M domestic total) and Five Nights at Freddy’s ($80M domestic opening, $137.2M domestic total); the latter film blew away opening weekend expectations and subsequently became the highest-grossing horror movie of the year. Last year’s other Blumhouse releases, franchise entries Insidious: The Red Door ($33M domestic opening, $82.1M domestic total) and The Exorcist: Believer ($26.4M domestic opening, $65.5M domestic total), didn’t achieve that level of success—but they still contributed to a much better year than Blumhouse is having so far in 2024, with January’s Night Swim ($11.7M domestic opening, $32.4M domestic total) and March’s Imaginary ($9.9M domestic opening, $28M domestic total) failing to make waves at the box office. (Blumhouse’s Afraid, in theaters August 30 from Sony, is projected to open between $7M and $12M.)

An English-language remake of a 2022 Danish film, Speak No Evil co-stars James McAvoy, who previously appeared in 2017’s Split ($40M opening weekend, $138.1M domestic opening) and 2019’s Glass ($40.3M opening weekend, $111M domestic total), Blumhouse’s third and fifth highest domestic earners of all time, respectively. His return to the horror genre should be a boost among genre enthusiasts, even if Speak No Evil doesn’t have the benefit of a marquee name (M. Night Shyamalan) in the director’s chair, as Split and Glass did. Helming Speak No Evil is James Watkins, whose comparable titles—2008’s Eden Lake and 2012’s The Woman in Black, the first salvo in a short-lived reboot of the legendary Hammer brand—both came out long enough ago that their box office totals aren’t particularly instructive here. More apt points of comparison are 2022’s Barbarian ($10.5M domestic opening) and Smile ($22.6M domestic opening) or 2015’s The Visit ($25.4M domestic opening), all three horror titles based on new (or new-to-American-audiences) IP.

The Killer’s Game | Lionsgate
Domestic Opening Weekend Range: $5M – $10M

Lionsgate has quite the diverse slate closing out 2024, with titles ranging from genre remake The Crow to Francis Ford Coppola’s passion project Megalopolis to horror title Never Let Go and feel-good family titles White Bird and The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. With the September release of The Killer’s Game, the studio behind the John Wick movies is betting on action—which hopefully does well for them, as the studio has several upcoming titles in that genre, including Den of Thieves: Pantera, In The Grey, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, and the long-delayed John Wick spinoff Ballerina.

With The Killer’s Game, Lionsgate goes the action-comedy route, with Dave Bautista starring as a hitman who, thinking he has a terminal disease, places an uncancellable hit on himself–only to find that he’s not dying after all. Scant marketing indicates a tone in line with recent releases The Beekeeper ($16.5M domestic opening, $66.2 domestic total) and Meg 2: The Trench ($30M domestic opening, $82.6M domestic total)—though Jason Statham, star of those two films, has demonstrated more box office appeal as a leading man than Bautista, who’s found more success appearing in large-scale ensemble films (the Dune and Guardians of the Galaxy movies; Blade Runner 2049) than in films that feature him more prominently; the latter group includes 2020’s My Spy (which was shifted to a streaming-only release following a pandemic-era acquisition by Amazon) and 2019’s Stuber ($8.2M domestic opening, $22.3M domestic total). Die-hard action fans will make or break this one, with crossover success among mainstream audiences looking unlikely; our box office panel predicts an opening in line with fellow Lionsgate September release The Expendables 4, which opened last year to $8M.

Tracking Updates [as of 8/9]

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