How One Small 2026 Horror Movie Defied The Odds And Became A Box Office Hit

In a year full of surprises at the box office, "Buddy" helped send a robust summer season off on a high note. Directed by Casper Kelly, the man behind the "Adult Swim Yule Log," a movie made without Warner Bros. even knowing about it, the darkly comedic horror film opened to $5.3 million this past weekend, far exceeding estimates of around $2.5 million heading into the weekend.

This sort of overperformance doesn't often happen, especially for a movie of this size — a low-budget indie from a distributor that only has a handful of movies that have ever made $20 million or more at the box office. "Buddy" defied the odds.

"It was crazy," said Howard Cohen, the co-founder and co-president of Roadside Attractions, the company distributing the movie. Cohen spoke with /Film following the movie's surprising opening to offer some insight into how this all happened. "It was interesting because Fandango of all places had us at $5.4 million early in the weekend, and we were like, 'That's crazy.'"

"Buddy" is an analog horror movie that takes place inside the colorful world of a children's TV program called "It's Buddy!" A group of children spend their days singing, dancing, and helping Buddy spread happiness. But when one child refuses to play along, Buddy is not pleased and cracks begin to appear in this seemingly perfect world.

Roadside typically distributes smaller movies, like Nicolas Cage's thriller "The Surfer." Its films generally perform modestly at the box office, making up the difference on VOD, streaming, etc. "Buddy" now ranks as the second-biggest opening in the company's history, which dates back to 2003. It trails only "I Can Only Imagine" ($17.1 million), the box office hit no one saw coming in 2018.

Because of the film's opening weekend success, Roadside is now likely delaying the planned VOD date and expanding into more theaters — as many as 1,800 on its second weekend. Another factoid: "Buddy" had the biggest opening for any movie opening on 1,800 screens or less in 2026. It opened on just 1,277, giving it a stellar $4,331 per-screen average. Meanwhile, Ridley Scott's "The Dog Stars," which flopped at the box office, opened to just $7.7 million on 3,330 screens.

So, how the hell does this happen? It all starts with Casper Kelly, who developed a following thanks to "Too Many Cooks" on Adult Swim. "There were tons of people like, 'Oh my God, 'Too Many Cooks.' I'm there. I'm there. I'm there.' I think that helped it spread, and then it went way beyond the 'Too Many Cooks' people," Cohen said.

That's when it took off. "We had 20 million views each of the first two trailers, three teasers," Cohen said. "We never did a full trailer. We did three teasers very deliberately because we wanted to intrigue people about the world of the movie."

Indeed, there was never a traditional full trailer for "Buddy." Instead, a series of teasers leaned on the imagery, particularly the titular Buddy the Unicorn. That worked. Roadside has 25,000 people in the Buddy Fan Club who signed up via text and can be marketed to directly. In total, the movie has around 500,000 followers on various platforms.

In terms of traditional marketing, it was all about reaching the intended audience — namely, younger, hungry horror fans. That meant meeting them where they are: online. "In the pre-pandemic era, you were advertising on both linear television and online," Cohen pointed out. "This movie had no linear television [marketing] and the audience was under 35."

"It was largely about engaging the audience online," Howard Cohen added. "You don't know that it equals box office." The executive noted that they've had movies that had "200 million views" on Instagram thanks to star power that were not successful.

Cohen also credits some of the success to what he calls the tradition of "mascot horror." Buddy, the character, was very "memeable," with fans making videos and other content online even before the movie came out.

"Buddy," which premiered at Sundance, is the latest non-franchise horror movie to break out in 2026. "Obsession" recently crossed the $500 million box office milestone, while A24's "Backrooms" made just shy of $400 million. "Buddy" won't touch those grosses, but it shares a commonality with those movies: It's offering up something fresh.

"Sundance was before 'Backrooms' and 'Obsession' came out. I think [other potential distributors] were perhaps put off by the fact that ["Buddy"] really asked of you to drop assumptions," Cohen said. "You start in the world of the TV show, and it stays in there for almost half an hour. I think that was pretty radical, and I think we just felt like audiences would go with it. We just felt like the horror audience has been demanding new and different, and this definitely was."

"I heard that they spent $40 million releasing 'Backrooms,'" Cohen said. Roadside doesn't have that kind of money, but Cohen's philosophy is, you don't need to spend $10 million to make $20 million. As for what advice he'd offer other small movies out there hoping to break big? Originality, as he sees it, is the key:

"This is the cliche, but the audiences are hungry for originality and to the extent that your movie is original and you can market it in an original way, I think this is open to you. The hard part is it's not assembly line in any way. So that's something. Even for us to duplicate this is not going to be straightforward because it was very much the film. It was very much the character."

"Buddy" is in theaters now.