This Monday is Martin Luther King Day, a legal holiday in the United States. The three consecutive days together form a small holiday. Traditionally, new films mainly targeting African-American audiences will be released during this period. Sony Pictures' comedy "One of Them Days" released last Friday is such a work. The film did not disappoint expectations. After being released in 2,675 theaters in North America, it earned $11.6 million in the opening box office, ranking first in the weekend box office list.
"Unlucky Day" is starred by Keke Palmer and SZA, telling the story of two roommates who are struggling to pay the rent. The plot of the film is quite down-to-earth, and it is also a restricted-level film featuring black women that has not appeared on American screens for a long time. Coupled with the high popularity of singer SZA, such a good opening performance can be said to be justified.
Poster of "Bad Luck Day"
In comparison, the situation of another large-scale new film is not so ideal. The new version of "Wolf Man" co-produced by horror film studio Blumhouse and Universal Pictures, starring Christopher Abbott, is set in a forest cabin in Oregon, trying to give the traditional werewolf story a new luster. However, judging from the box office, this attempt does not seem to be successful. The film was released in 3,354 theaters over the weekend, far more than "Unlucky Day", and only earned $10.55 million in opening box office, which is even worse than the $11.53 million box office of "The Lion King" which has been released for a long time, and can only rank third on the weekend box office list.
In fact, the opening box office of The Wolf Man of $10.55 million was not only far lower than the industry's expected box office of $20 million, but even lower than the opening box office of The Wolf Man of $17.9 million released in 1994. Considering the ticket price increase over the past 30 years, and the fact that 40% of the opening box office of The Wolf Man came from special theaters such as IMAX, which is more expensive, the number of viewers who actually went to the theaters to watch the new version of The Wolf Man over the three-day weekend was definitely much less than the heyday of Hollywood in 1994.
The Wolf Man poster
The screenwriter and director of "The Wolf Man" is 48-year-old Australian Leigh Whannell. Back in 2020, his new version of "The Invisible Man" for Blumhouse and Universal Pictures received rave reviews, with a global box office of $144 million, a classic example of restarting Universal Pictures' monster IP. However, this time "The Wolf Man" failed to do the same. Both the media rating ("Rotten Tomatoes" freshness 53%) and the audience rating (C- grade) are far lower than the previous "The Invisible Man" ("Rotten Tomatoes" freshness 92%, audience rating B+).
A few years ago, Universal Pictures ambitiously proposed their "Dark Universe" plan, planning to build Universal's various monster IPs into a worldview similar to the Marvel Universe. The first movie launched was "The Mummy" in 2017. This action movie starring Tom Cruise cost a lot of money, but the box office was not ideal.
At that time, Universal had released a promotional photo, and the big-name actors in the photo were said to be starring in the subsequent "Dark Universe" movies: Johnny Depp played the Invisible Man, Cruise will continue to play the Mummy, Javier Bardem will play Frankenstein in "Frankenstein", Angelina Jolie will play the Bride of Frankenstein, etc. However, the plan came to nothing soon after, and the above-mentioned big-name actors terminated their contracts with it. Since then, Universal has changed its course and adopted the so-called case-by-case approach to deal with these monster movies. The Invisible Man five years ago was a great success, but the Wolf Man five years later failed to "copy without distortion", which also made the future direction of the monster IP more confusing.
Overall, the total North American box office last weekend was about 77 million U.S. dollars, far lower than the average level of about 150 million U.S. dollars in the same period before 2019. In particular, "The Wolf Man", which debuted as a standard genre film, failed to replicate the almost unbeatable success of horror films in the market in the past few years, which really surprised many people.
In fact, looking back at 2024, many horror films such as "Imaginary Friends", "Blood Ballet", "The Omen", "The Tarot", and "The Immaculate Sister" have not performed as expected. In the years when the COVID-19 pandemic was rampant, horror and thriller films that emphasized collective viewing experience and targeted the young people's market became the rare favorites in the market. In addition, the production costs of such works were relatively low, which led to some film companies that were not keen on shooting this type of film in the past to rush to shoot, and the number of new films increased sharply. The first horror film "The Wolf Man" in 2025 failed to achieve a good start. It seems that it is inevitable for Hollywood film companies to readjust their strategies.
