Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media’s “Scream” has ended the reign of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” atop the box office charts, earning $13.3 million from 3,664 theaters on Friday and putting itself in position to meet pre-release projections for a $35 million extended opening on Martin Luther King weekend.
The fifth installment in the “Scream” series saw the return of stars Courteney Cox, Neve Campbell and David Arquette in a film aimed both towards the 18-35 crowd that made up a significant majority of the moviegoing audience as theaters reopened last year, as well as Gen X moviegoers that saw the original “Scream” in 1996. Reception for the film, which continues the series’ deconstruction of horror movie tropes, was positive with a 76% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes to go with an 86% audience score and a B+ on CinemaScore.
With this result, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” has been denied the chance to become the first film since “Black Panther” in 2018 to earn five straight No. 1 weekends. But the Sony/Marvel blockbuster will pass “Black Panther” on the all-time domestic charts this weekend as it eclipses $700 million in domestic grosses. “No Way Home” added $5.1 million on Friday and is estimated to add $26.7 million through Monday, which would give it a total of $704 million.
In third is Universal/Illumination’s “Sing 2,” which continues to post solid holds despite its availability as a digital rental over the past week with an estimated 4-day total of $11.4 million, which would bring its total to $122.5 million. 20th Century Studios’ “The King’s Man” and Universal’s “The 355” complete the Top 5 in a narrow race for fourth, with each earning around $2.9 million this weekend, according to industry estimates.
“Scream” and “No Way Home” will provide a boost to theaters at a time when the box office is expected to go through a dry spell, but it won’t be enough to bring overall totals anywhere near pre-pandemic levels. Estimates for the 3-day weekend are currently set at around $76 million, up from last weekend’s $62 million but below the $131 million for the same weekend in 2019.
