Horror title Insidious: The Red Door from Screen Gems, Stage 6 Films and Blumhouse earned a franchise best $5m in Thursday previews through Sony Pictures.
The final instalment in the saga of the Lambert family and the sinister realm known as The Further reunites the original cast of Patrick Wilson, Ty Simpkins, Rose Byrne and Andrew Astor. Wilson makes his feature directorial debut.
The most recent entry in the series, Insidious: The Last Key, opened on $29.5m in January 2018 and finished just shy of $70m. The highest achiever of the franchise is Insidious: Chapter 2 from September 2013, which opened on $40m and finished on $83.6m. Numbers are unadjusted for inflation.
The Red Door launched in 2,806 locations on Thursday and heads into a weekend in which Disney/Lucasfilm’s Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny – on track to cross $100m in North American on Friday – will look to post a solid hold in its second weekend and retain the number one weekend ranking.
Lionsgate’s R-rated comedy Joy Ride led by an all-Asian cast featuring Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Oscar-nominated Stephanie Hsu, and Sabrina Wu earned $1.1m in Thursday previews.
The story of friends who embark on an international adventure premiered at SXSW and is expected to earn in the range of $7m-9m range when it opens in 2,820 theatres.
However all eyes will be on Indiana Jones as it plays through its second weekend. Harrison Ford’s final outing in the title role launched last weekend on a disappointing $60.4m and should coast past $200m worldwide given its $164m gross as of Friday, of which $70.2m comes from the international arena.
It will need to finish a lot higher than that to break even given the reported $295m price tag. The adventure delivered an underwhelming start to a crucial July in which Hollywood executives are pinning their hopes on several tentpoles to make gains on summer 2019 box office.
The last pre-pandemic summer season finished on $4.3bn and there are three heavyweight contenders arriving imminently which will aim to turn July into a winner and give box office a chance of coming close to the $4bn mark.
Paramount unleashes Tom Cruise in typical death-defying form in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One on Wednesday (July 12). Nine days later sees the arrival of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling via Warner Bros and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer starring Cillian Murphy through Universal.
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