When Warner Bros. announced their box office estimates for director Andres Muschietti's IT yesterday, they wowed the industry by revealing that the new film had pulled in an impressive $117 million over the weekend. This was more than enough to crush the competition and shatter season and genre records, but here is the funny thing: the estimate was too conservative. As it turns out, the horror film actually made $6 million more than Warner Bros. initially reported.
Trade stories on Sunday suggested that the $117 million announced by Warner Bros. was a touch too low for the new blockbuster, the information coming from competitor reports, and now it seems Box Office Mojo has confirmed. The site has updated their data, which now says that IT made $123.1 million in its first few days of release. It doesn't necessarily change things in the record books (the movie is still about $9 million short of Deadpool's record for "Biggest Opening Weekend For An R-Rated Film"), but who among us would sneeze at an additional $6 million?
Just the same as the $117 million figure, the $123.1 million made by IT over the weekend is a record-setter on many levels. One of the minor ones is that it's the biggest September opening of all time (finding little competition in the $48 million posted by Hotel Transylvania 2 a few years ago), but it's also notably the most significant opening that the entire fall season has ever seen (the previous record-holder was Gravity with $55.7 million). The Stephen King adaptation also has the distinction of making more money in its first three days than any other horror film in history, and it's on its way to become the most successful title that the genre has ever seen.
What will this box office success mean for the future? One thing that's for certain is that Warner Bros. is going to want IT: Chapter 2 IMMEDIATELY, but we can expect the business impact to go far beyond that. Even after the disappointment of The Dark Tower we can probably expect Stephen King's name to shoot up in value, but it's also possible that it could continue changing the way that the industry looks at the black sheep genre that is horror. IT is serious proof that scares can generate as much money as any other cinematically-induced emotional outburst, and as a result perhaps we could start seeing a stronger investment from studios. Either that or we'll be seeing 10,000 killer clown movies over the next five years.
In case you couldn't tell, IT's box office numbers are a continuing fascination to us - with the feature now having made over $185 million worldwide. We're going to continue to follow its run all throughout its theatrical release, but be sure to also stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for a whole lot more editorial content about the film!
