Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Mirrors Afterlife With $45 Million Opening Weekend

Update 03/24/2023: With the latest box office numbers in (via Variety), "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire" has pulled out ahead of expectations and is now tracking for a $45 million opening weekend. The headline has been updated to reflect this. Original article follows.

March 2024 is a month of movie empires, as "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire" lands in theaters just one week ahead of "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire." With early box office numbers in, the latest "Ghostbusters" sequel is looking like more of a North Sea Empire than a Roman Empire (one for the history nerds, there), with a $16 million opening day and a projected opening weekend total of around $42 million, according to The Wrap. 2021's "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" grossed $16.6 million on its opening day and rounded out the weekend with $44 million, so the two movies are performing almost identically.

With a $75 million production budget and a worldwide box office total of $204.3 million, "Afterlife" was considered a modest success, especially given the extenuating circumstances of movie theaters still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire" was given a bigger price tag of $100 million to accommodate a larger ensemble cast, a return to New York City, and substantial visual effects, with Sony no doubt hoping for a post-pandemic box office uptick like the one enjoyed by "Dune: Part Two."

"Frozen Empire" instead opening on par with the previous movie isn't exactly a disaster, but it's probably a disappointment for the studio, which has spent the last decade striving to revitalize the franchise. "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire" received a B+ CinemaScore from opening night audience polling, the same grade received by 2016 female-led reboot, and currently has a score of 43% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Aside from Sony trying to make the most of the intellectual property on its shelves, "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire" is also the latest Hollywood effort to nail the niche genre of family-friendly horror. Sony/Columbia pulled this off with 2015's "Goosebumps" and its follow-up "Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween," both of which were modest mid-budget box office successes. Disney also took a swing (and missed) last year with "Haunted Mansion." 

"Ghostbusters" perhaps wasn't the best source material for family-friendly scares in the first place, what with the original movie's notorious ghost blowjob scene and a theme song that declares, "Bustin' makes me feel good." The trailers for "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire" also seemed to kind of forget about children as a target audience, instead milking nostalgia for a movie that came out decades before the current generation of kids were born. And its PG-13 rating means that, in the eyes of the MPA at least, "Frozen Empire" is no more family-friendly than "M3GAN" or "Five Nights at Freddy's" — two box office megahits that were marketed as straightforward horror films. Maybe that's what the kids really want.

Next week, "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire" will face another challenge as it contends with the arrival of "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire." Yes, it's an empire-off. Place your bets.