There’s only room for one killer clown at the top of box office charts.
“Terrifier 3” slashed its way to No. 1 in North America, collecting a stellar $18.3 million from 2,514 theaters in its opening weekend. It’s a huge start for the ultra-gory, independently made, low-budget slasher film about a demonic clown who brutalizes a small town.
Meanwhile “Joker: Folie á Deux,” which topped the box office last weekend, collapsed in third place with $7.055 million from 4,102 theaters. It could end up in fourth place, behind holdover “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” once the final numbers are tallied on Monday.
The off-beat comic book musical, starring Joaquin Phoenix as a reclusive stand-up comedian and part-time clown, suffered a tragic 82% decline in ticket sales from its already-disastrous $37.6 million debut. It ranks as one of the biggest-second weekend drops for the superhero genre, plunging more severely than last year’s misfires of “The Marvels” (78.1%), “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” (69.9%), “Shazam: Fury of the Gods” (69%) and “The Flash” (72.5%).
So far, “Folie a Deux” has generated $51.6 million domestically and $165.3 million globally. The Warner Bros. film carries a hefty $200 million price tag and, at this rate, will struggle to get anywhere near the $450 million needed to break even, according to sources familiar with the financials.
“Terrifier 3” has surprisingly positive critical and audience reactions for such an unsettling movie, scoring a “B” on CinemaScore and 77% on Rotten Tomatoes. The blood-soaked threequel, which doesn’t have a rating by the Motion Picture Association, has been stoking conversation about violence, with the distributors at Cineverse launching a hotline for moviegoers to complain about the carnage.