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Box Office Receipts Show ‘The Conjuring 2’ Rules The World

By Nick Younker
Published on: 09:36 PST, Jun 11, 2016

Box office receipts for Friday clearly show that James Wan has hit another home run with The Conjuring 2. What’s even more interesting is that the R-rated film that features massive scares and thrills has beat out two new openers in the fantasy, comedy and action genres.

One thing that can be said for box office numbers in the summer is that anything can happen. Although the summer blockbuster season is normally reserved for big movie releases that have some sort of Transformer or Star Wars theme to it, they have also been big hauls for movies in the horror genre as well, providing the movie was done right and appeals to a mass-audience.

But according to Box Office Mojo, the undisputed champion for Friday night was none other than The Conjuring 2. It pulled in $16.4 million at the box office and the two other major releases for the night, Warcraft and Now You See Me 2, were far off in the distance, pulling in $10.7 million and $8.4 million, respectively.

As many fans of The Conjuring franchise already know, horror is a tough sell to a big American audience. If the movie is rated R, then it is even harder to take the top honors at the box office. But The Conjuring 2 was indeed rated R and it was for intense scenes of fright and terror. With all that in mind, it still was able to squeak out a commanding box office win over two major franchises that have large followings within the majority of the public sector.

The box office also had some stiff competition from previous weeks movies, which were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, X-Men: Apocalypse, The Angry Birds Movie, Alice Through The Looking Glass, The Jungle Book, and Captain America: Civil War.

All of those films have a track history of great performance at the box office, but they did not have enough momentum to stop the undisputed king of horror, James Wan, from delivering a major box office win with The Conjuring 2.

The predecessor to that film, The Conjuring, was also a major success story at the box office. It hauled in $318 million across the globe and became an overnight success story for James Wan, who had seen previous successes at the box office with franchise favorites like Saw and Insidious.

So, in comparison to the success of The Conjuring 2 to its original film, The Conjuring, the two films would have to be measured against each other on their daily box office performance, since the new movie is still in its infancy in the theatrical run.

First of all, The Conjuring started out its run on only 2,903 screens across America. But even still, it pulled in a slightly better box office haul at $16.9 million on its opening Friday, which was on July 19, 2013.

By comparison, The Conjuring 2 started out its run yesterday, June 10, on 3,343 screens across America, pulling in $16.4 million. Although that is slightly lower than the original film, that does nothing to allay the momentum heading into the film.

It might also be worth mentioning that after the major success of The Conjuring at the box office in its first weekend, it was expanded to 3,022 screens in the second weekend, but only pulled in $7.3 million on the following Friday. But that is still a major victory for an R-rated horror film.

The unexpected success of The Conjuring franchise films are no longer so surprising, except when they beat out such major competition during the summer months.

[Image via Warner Bros.]

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