It may be barely May but the summer movie season essentially started two weeks ago with the release of Avengers: Endgame. This is the time of year when nearly every major release is looking to bring in major box office dollars, especially major franchise players. This includes the Conjuring franchise, as the newest installment of the series, Annabelle Comes Home is looking to bring in something in the neighborhood of $40 million domestic during its opening weekend.
While a $40 million domestic opening might not seem like a great deal, especially now that Avengers: Endgame has completely thrown perspective out of wack by bringing in over $600 million domestically in barely over a week, for Annabelle Comes Home, it's a solid number.
Box Office Pro is projecting a number between $35-$45 million domestic which is a number on par with what most of the films in the Conjuring franchise have done. In fact, the two previous Annabelle movies opened at $35 million and $37 million respectively, so the new movie is actually tracking to do slightly better than the previous films in that particular series.
This is especially good news because horror movies will not be in short supply as we go into the summer. The remake of Child's Play will be hitting theaters only the weekend before Annabelle Comes Home, and the Octavia Spencer-led Ma comes out at the end of May. It's possible horror movie fans might have had their fill before Annabelle Comes Home is released, but based on the numbers, that won't be the case.
This means the new movie will likely also finish up where many of the other Conjuring movies have, which means it has a good shot at breaking the $100 million domestic box office mark. Only the first Annabelle movie was unable to hit that number within the franchise, unless you count The Curse of La Llorona as being part of the series, and the jury is still sort of out on whether or not that one counts.
Of course, considering even those two films had budgets of under $10 million, they were still quite successful financially.
One reason Annabelle Comes Home may do better than other Conjuring movies, beyond the main entries, is that Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson, the stars of the main entries, are set to appear in the new film. This means that fans that maybe haven't been all in on the spinoffs might still give this one a chance.
With The Conjuring 3 still on the horizon, fans may not want to miss this entry in the franchise in case it has bearing on the next movie. This is, after all, how cinematic universes work, and The Conjuring universe is one of the few outside of Marvel to be truly successful.
