Hollywood may have had dismal box-office takings this summer, hitting studio share prices, but sometimes glimmers of hope come from the scariest places. It, the new film adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 horror novel, has turned out to be a record-breaker.
Warner Bros’ R-rated frightener took in $117.2 million during its opening weekend in the U.S.—the most successful launch weekend for any horror movie, the biggest September opening ever, and the second-biggest opener for films with that adults-only rating (the first being last year’s Deadpool).
Analysts seemed bullish when they predicted a $70 million opening weekend for It—twice its reported production budget—but the film really seems to have caught people’s imaginations.
According to Box Office Mojo’s calculations, It accounted for more than three quarters of the revenue taken by the top 12 U.S. releases over the last weekend. Second place was taken by Reese Witherspoon vehicle Home Again, which only took $9 million.
It stamped all over the $19 million that The Dark Tower, another King adaptation that’s generally been received as a flop, harvested in its opening weekend last month.
The new movie, directed by Argentina’s Andrés Muschietti, tells the story of a group of kids in the 1980s who face a malevolent clown called Pennywise. It stars Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise, while also featuring Finn Wolfhard, a star of Netflix’s hit series Stranger Things.