While it was a long way off the grosses achieved by Bill Skarsgård’s last ascent to the top of the box-office charts with The Eternals and It: Chapter Two, his well-received slasher flick Barbarian still managed to outperform expectations over the weekend and earn $10M.
Barbarian, which we called “chaotically unhinged” and “consistently engaging” in our ★★★★ review (which you can read here), was the only film to hit double-digits during what turned out to be the year’s second worst grossing weekend.
Written and directed by Zach Cregger, Barbarian was moved to fill the void left by Warner Bros. Salem’s Lot, which has been shunted to April 21st, 2023. It tells the story of a young woman (Georgina Campbell) who arrives to stay at a Detroit rental home, only to discover that the house is double booked and a strange man is already staying there.
In a logic-defying decision that only exists in this genre she decides to spend the night, but soon discovers that there’s a lot more to fear than just an unexpected house guest. Justin Long, Matthew Patrick Davis, Richard Brake, Jaymes Butler and Kurt Braunohler also star
In second place was another film that took advantage of the barren box-office landscape and outperformed. Bollywood import Brahmāstra: Part One – Shiva earned the best per-theatre-average for a weekend gross of $4.4M. Starring Indian superstars Ranbir Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, and Amitabh Bachchan, the film is intended as the first part of a trilogy, and is expected to kick-start Bollywood’s own Marvel-style shared universe of superhero films. It has already taken $9M in the first two days of release in India.
Notable mentions must go to Bullet Train, which is still chugging along in third place with $3.2M, taking its domestic cume to $92M, and its global tally over the $200M mark, and Top Gun: Maverick, which took its phenomenal domestic gross to $705.6M.
As always, stats and statistics for box-office nerds can be found over at Box Office Mojo.
