It’s official: Blumhouse is back in fine form.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is on course to win the weekend with a sizeable $56.6 million at the domestic box office to score the top opening ever for the post-Thanksgiving frame, among other milestones.
Critics snubbed the Universal and Blumhouse sequel — its current ranking on Rotten Tomatoes is 13 percent, compared to 33 percent for the first — but audiences don’t seem to mind. Freddy’s 2 earned a a B Cinemasore (not bad for a horror title) and strong exits.
And while it won’t match the $80 million domestic launch of the first Five Nights at Freddy‘s, it hard to compare the two because of markedly different play patterns.
Other milestones: the sequel looks to score the second-best horror opening of 2025 to-date at the domestic office behind only Atomic Monster’s The Conjuring Last Rites (Atomic Monster and Blumhouse merged in 2024); the year’s highest opening so for PG-13 horror pic ahead of Predator: Badlands; and the highest December horror opening at the domestic box office ahead of Scream 2.
In 2023, Blumhouse’s box-office horror phenomenon Five Nights at Freddy’s, based on the blockbuster game series by Scott Cawthon about the oversized animatronic animal figures that inhabit Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, became the highest-grossing horror film of the year in earning north of $300 million globally. Josh Hutcherson leads tddhe cast, with Emma Tammi returning to direct.
The sequel topped Friday’s chart with a whopping $30.1 million, including previews.
Disney’s record-smashing Thanksgiving tentpole Zootopia 2 is looking at second-place finish with $45 million for a domestic total north of $222 million through Sunday.
Universal and Jon M. Chu’s Wicked: For Good is falling off a relatively steep 75 percent in its third weekend to an estimated $15.6 million for a dometic tally of $296 million through Sunday, versus $322.1 million for the first Wicked at the same point in tim (the first installment, opening over Thanksgiving 2024, declined 55 percent on the same respective weekend.
GKIDS’ new anime pic Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution is slotted to come in fourth with an estimated $10 million.
Two Lionsgate titles — the back-to-back rerelease of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair — and Now You See Me: Now You Don’t are duking it for fifth place at around $4 million.
More to come.
