‘Exorcist’ Box Office: ‘The Believer’ Delivers $27.2M Opening

Halloween fever is gripping Hollywood as The Exorcist: Believer, Nun 2, and Saw X stay strong at the Box Office.

via: Hollywood Reporter

The Exorcist: Believer had no trouble delivering a first-place finish at the weekend box office with an estimated $27.2 million from 3,663 theaters. While a respectable opening in this climate, the R-rated film came in below expectations domestically as it tries to revive the franchise after Universal reportedly paid a hefty $400 million for rights.

Overseas, the pic started off with $17.9 million from its first 40 markets for a global start of $45.1 million.

The David Gordon Green-directed horror pic hits theaters exactly 50 years after the first Exorcist opened and made cinema history, grossing nearly $450 million at the global box office before adjusting for inflation. Directed by William Friedkin, the film was based on the book by William Peter Blatty and starred Linda Blair and Ellen Burstyn.

Heading into this weekend, The Exorcist: Believer was tracking for a domestic launch in the $30 million to $36 million range.

It is the fourth film in the franchise (the second and third were disappointments). For the first time since the original 1973 film, Burstyn reprises her iconic role as Chris MacNeil, an actress who has been forever altered by what happened to her daughter Regan five decades before. It centers on Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.), whose daughter (Lidya Jewett) and her friend (Olivia Marcum) become possessed.

The horror market is also saturated. Saw X, which debuted at $18.6 million a week ago, earned an estimated $8.2 million from 3,262 cinemas in its second outing to come in No. 3 behind Exorcist and PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie, which earned $11.8 million from 4,027 locations in its sophomore outing. Lionsgate’s latest Saw installment fell 55 percent for a 10-day domestic total of $32.5 million against a reported production budget of just $13 million.

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