Talk To Me Is Already A24's Second Biggest Horror Movie At The Domestic Box Office
Horror is one of the most exciting genres to watch at the box office, because you'll find more rags-to-riches stories there than anywhere else. Horror fans generally aren't looking for A-list stars or expensive CGI: they just want to get scared, have fun, and hopefully see something that they haven't seen before. The entry fee for making a horror movie is pretty low, which means that the market is flooded with bad low-budget horror movies. So when an indie horror movie does break through the noise, it's usually something pretty special.
Enter "Talk To Me," the feature film debut from Australian YouTuber brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, which was made for less than $4.5 million. That's not on the extreme end of low-budget filmmaking, especially for horror movies; adjusting for inflation, it's about three times the budget that Sam Raimi had for "The Evil Dead." However, it's a tenth of what Universal Pictures spent on this weekend's new horror release, "The Last Voyage of the Demeter," and "Talk to Me" grossed almost as much in its third weekend at the box office as "Demeter" made in its opening weekend.
Following an impressive $10 million debut, "Talk To Me" dropped less than 40 percent in its second weekend and added another $5.1 million this weekend – a drop of just 19 percent. That brings its domestic total to $31.2 million, surpassing "The Witch" and "Midsommar" to become A24's second-biggest horror movie ever at the North American box office. And while "Hereditary" currently still wears the crown, there's a good chance that "Talk To Me" will snatch it away.
A24's brand of boutique horror
Few entertainment companies have a brand quite so well-defined as A24, which is particularly impressive given that the independent production/distribution company was founded scarcely a decade ago. You'll rarely hear people talk about "the new Warner Bros. movie" or "that Paramount Pictures movie," but among cinephiles the phrase "A24 movie" conjures up a clear set of assumptions in much the same way that "Disney movie" or "HBO show" do.
Quality control is a big part of that. Using the admittedly flawed measuring stick of Rotten Tomatoes critics' scores, out of 135 movies either produced and/or distributed by A24, 111 are rated "Fresh" and 86 have the coveted "Certified Fresh" label, earned by getting a score of 75 percent or more from at least 80 reviews. Some of these movies — including A24's current top-grossing horror release, "Hereditary" — were greenlit and funded by A24 from the ground up. But much of the studio's success has been built on finding the most buzzed-about indie movies at Sundance and bidding aggressively for the distribution rights.
Such was the case with "Talk To Me," which A24 picked up at Sundance for a number "in the high seven-figure range," according to Variety. Even factoring in the additional costs of marketing and a wide release ("Talk To Me" premiered in 2,340 theaters and has expanded to more since then), the studio has to be very happy with the returns so far.
"Talk To Me" is still slightly behind the pace of "Hereditary," which at this point in its theatrical run had grossed $34.8 million. But A24's latest horror venture is already looking very leggy, and has a good shot at surpassing the $44 million domestic total for "Hereditary" before it leaves theaters. Paimon and the other seven kings of Hell had better watch their backs.