You're Next Quietly Made A Killing At The Box Office And Launched Adam Wingard's Career
(Welcome to Tales from the Box Office, our column that examines box office miracles, disasters, and everything in between, as well as what we can learn from them.)
In 2013, a home invasion horror movie was released that made a ridiculous amount of money relative to its tiny production budget which helped launch the career of a now-prominent filmmaker. That may sound like "The Purge" but I'm actually talking about "You're Next," the beloved slasher flick that helped to put Adam Wingard on the map. Wingard has since made giant blockbusters like "Godzilla vs. Kong," which helped bring movie theaters back to life in 2021 in the aftermath of the quarantine era of the pandemic. Wingard is now an A-list director, and that journey pretty much starts with this movie.
What's interesting about "You're Next" is that it's almost become a cult classic of sorts, as it wasn't a big enough hit in its day to spawn a franchise, but it was a big enough hit to make Lionsgate some money while also getting Wingard and his writing partner Simon Barrett more high-profile jobs. It was a big-but-not-huge hit that people discovered and fell in love with on their own. A decade later, it's a fascinating case study in timing being everything.
In this week's edition of Tales From the Box Office, we're looking back at "You're Next" in honor of its 10-year anniversary. We'll look at how the movie came to be, why it sat collecting dust for two years after Lionsgate acquired it, what happened when it finally hit theaters under somewhat unfortunate circumstances, and what lessons we can learn from it a decade later. Let's dig in, shall we?
The movie: You're Next
"You're Next" is a take on a slasher film with a home invasion set-up. The film focuses on a gang of masked, ax-wielding murderers in animal masks who make things bloody at the Davison family reunion. The family appears to be trapped until an unlikely guest at the reunion turns out to be the most talented killer of all. Spoiler alert: It's Sharni Vinson's Erin, who turns the killers into the killed, flipping the whole premise on its head.
Wingard was by no means a new director when this movie came about around 2010. He had made smaller films such as "Home Sick," "A Horrible Way to Die," and had contributed segments in anthology horror films such as "V/H/S" alongside Barrett. But a studio-released feature film? That was something that had eluded them. Speaking to Bloody Disgusting a couple of years back in a retrospective piece, Wingard explained:
"Up until then, everything, for me as a director, had been very experimental and very low budget. This was the first time that we had a big budget, which was essentially half a million dollars. To us, that seemed like an unbelievable fortune. It was our first shot at doing something more mainstream."
The movie's official budget was $1 million, but a good chunk of that goes to pay the actors and whatnot. So what Wingard had to work with as a filmmaker, in practice, was around $500,000. That's an ultra-low budget by most studio standards, but a big sum for Wingard at that time.
A slasher by way of Agatha Christie
As for how the duo came up with this particular story, it all had to do with the way in which they collaborated. "I said, 'Hey Simon, I really think like the only type of movies that are scaring me are home invasion movies like 'Them' and 'The Strangers,'" Wingard said to IndieWire in 2013. "I said, 'I think this is the subgenre we want to tackle.' And Simon took it from there. Barrett, for his part, actually gook more inspiration from Agatha Christie than more traditional horror touchstones. Speaking in that same interview, the writer explained:
"I was a huge fan of the Agatha Christie novel 'The Ten Little Indians' aka 'And Then There Were None.' And that was a huge inspiration for this film in terms of like how you do a horror movie that hasn't been done before."
While a $1 million budget was lavish for them, it still meant having to get creative. Most of the movie takes place in a big, isolated mansion. Not easy to pull off with so little money. Production designer Tom Hammock, very fortunately, lucked out as he found a big mansion located in Missouri a week before filming was set to begin, he revealed in that Bloody Disgusting retrospective.
"An elderly couple put [this] house up for sale, and it was in really bad shape. They hadn't maintained it. We were able to work out a deal with them where we cleaned it up and did a bunch of restoration work, so they could put it on the market in much better shape in exchange for letting us shoot there."
An 11th-hour location change isn't ideal, but the house worked perfectly for the film and allowed them to get the most bang for their buck. That's low-budget filmmaking for you.
A legend returns
As is often the case with lower-budget horror films, the cast is filled out with relative unknowns (to non-horror diehards, of course) as well as up-and-comers. There usually isn't enough money to get big stars roped in. However, the team felt it was important to have a horror mainstay on board to help anchor the film. Enter: Barbara Crampton.
The star of such classics as "From Beyond" and "Re-Animator" had largely retreated from Hollywood as roles for her had started to become harder to come by. "I had left the business for a long time when I was in my mid-30s. I wasn't getting many parts," Crampton explained to RogerEbert.com in 2021. But then Wingard came calling and the offer for "You're Next" came through. That changed everything.
For one, it helped give "You're Next" some street cred, as Crampton was a favorite amongst horror fans, and the movie is better for her being in it. More importantly, it completely reignited Crampton's passion for the business and, in her 50s, she kicked off an entirely new phase of her career. Here's how she explained it in that same interview:
"It reignited my passion for the whole process of filmmaking and for acting. I was so inspired by all those amazing filmmakers that came together to work on this movie together. It was like a chance encounter with Adam Wingard! I decided at that time that I wanted to rededicate myself to my career and to the horror genre specifically."
In the years since, Crampton has produced and starred in a number of films, including "We Are Still Here" and the acclaimed vampire flick "Jakob's Wife." If nothing else, Wingard and Co. are owed a great deal of credit for reviving Crampton's career.
Ethan Hawke thwarts You're Next - twice
"You're Next" premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2011 and the screening went incredibly well. As a result, Lionsgate scooped up the rights to the movie in what was described as a "competitive situation." The deal made was worth $2 million and included a commitment for a theatrical release. "This project represents everything that we look for in a horror film," then-Lionsgate co-COO John Constantine had this to say at the time. So why then did it take a full two years for the studio to release the film? Blame Ethan Hawke.
The actor starred in the runaway hit "Sinister" ($82 million worldwide/$3 million budget) which was released in September 2012. As Barrett explained in that Bloody Disgusting piece, they had been slated to hit theaters around the same time but Lionsgate, wisely, delayed the release.
"The film that was released instead of 'You're Next' was 'Sinister,' which was a huge hit. We'd been slated for basically the same day, and so they bumped us a year. That did feel like it took the wind out of the sails of any festival hype that we might have had so that by the time the movie came out, it didn't really feel like that new of a thing anymore."
But Hawke had yet another hit up his sleeve. In the summer of 2013, the home invasion horror movie "The Purge," also from Blumhouse, was an even bigger hit, taking in $91 million worldwide. It also featured killers in masks breaking into an affluent family's home. Actor Joe Swanberg, also speaking to Bloody Disgusting, said it definitely impacted them. As he explained:
"It definitely felt like 'The Purge' stole some of our thunder at the time. The home invasion was the main thing, and Jason Blum beat us to the punch. I remember in the summer of 2013 internally talking to some of the people and there being a little bit of a feeling of 'f***, we got scooped a little bit,' despite the fact that we made our movie years before."
The financial journey
Lionsgate benefited greatly from distributing "Sinister" but they kind of got kicked in the teeth a bit as Universal was behind "The Purge." Be that as it may, they had a buzzy horror flick to release. So, the studio decided to release "You're Next" at the very end of the summer moviegoing season on August 23, 2013, just shy of two years after they had initially acquired the film.
It ended up being a crowded weekend, with Lee Daniels' "The Butler" taking the top spot in its second frame, followed closely by the hit comedy "We're the Millers." To make matters worse, "The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones" and "The World's End" were also hitting theaters that same day, with Disney's "Planes" also there for the family crowd. That being the case, Wingard and Barrett's acclaimed horror flick had to settle for sixth place, taking in $7 million on its opening weekend. Despite dropping less than 42 percent – a great hold for a horror movie — the film felt out of the top 10 in its second frame.
In the end, the movie ended its run with $18.5 million domestically and $8.4 million internationally for a grand total of $26.9 million worldwide. It was nowhere near what "The Purge" pulled in and we never got a sequel, but given the movie's $1 million price tag and relatively low acquisition price, it was still a winner for Lionsgate. Particularly because the movie found life after theaters and has since been embraced widely as a modern horror classic.
More importantly, it put Wingard and Barrett on the map, with the duo tapped to helm the buzzy and secretive "Blair Witch" in 2016. Now? They're making gargantuan blockbusters with "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire" hitting theaters in March of 2024, with a live-action "Thundercats" movie in development as well. "You're Next" got that snowball rolling down the hill.
The lessons contained within
Nobody is crying for this movie, as it made just shy of 27 times its production budget and has managed to endure in the public consciousness a decade after its theatrical release. No easy task for any movie, let alone a small horror movie. But one can't help but wonder what might have happened if "You're Next" had come out in 2012 when the buzz was still strong, and before "The Purge" stole its thunder. Would we have several sequels to this film by now? Would it have made nearly $100 million at the box office instead of Hawke's two horror hits? These are questions we'll never see answered.
The takeaway here is that timing truly can be everything in the movie business, and that's rarely in the filmmaker's control. There are far too many factors at play to be able to predict good timing. It's just one of those somewhat unfortunate situations. I say somewhat because, let's be honest, this movie was still a hit and a beloved one at that. It gave us the Barbara Crampton resurgence and Wingard has had an enviable career ever since. We haven't even talked about the wildly underseen "The Guest," which sadly didn't make as big of a splash when it was released in 2014. But again, it's a movie that has found its audience.
Luckily, the industry at large recognized the talent that Wingard and Barrett have together as collaborators. Just because this movie wasn't as big of a hit as it perhaps could have been didn't ruin the trajectory of this filmmaker's career. The man gave us a wildly satisfying math-up between Godzilla and King Kong, and he may even get Nicolas Cage back for a "Face/Off" sequel. Movies are better with Wingard in Hollywood, if I may say so myself.