Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema have been the gold standard for horror over the past few decades, but Universal Pictures has slowly become their rival.
Universal Pictures not only stole Blumhouse away from Paramount Pictures, but they’ve become home to Jordan Peele‘s productions, including the brand new Candyman, directed by Nia DaCosta.
The box office has looked wounded over the past month, leaving studios in a panic and forcing some to make monumental shifts. With kids returning to school, it looked like we were in for an absolutely brutal fall – and yet, last weekend was popping with the release of the Ryan Reynolds-starrer Free Guy. This offered a little hope to Universal’s Candyman revival.
Audiences said his name and resurrected the Candyman franchise by helping the horror property pull in a whopping estimated $22.37M here in the States. It’s a confusing success, considering the weaker openings for everything from Suicide Squad to Escape Room, Old, The Forever Purge, and Don’t Breathe 2.
I won’t even pretend to understand what’s going on at the box office, but what I do know is that Disney’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is tracking at $60M, which is just nuts.
I point this out because it appears, at least as of this writing, that people are willing to take a little risk in heading back to the theater, which bodes as really, really good news for Malignant (Sept. 10), Halloween Kills (Oct. 15), Venom: Let There Be Carnage (Oct. 15), Last Night in Soho (Oct. 29), Antlers (Oct 29) and Ghostbusters: Afterlife (Nov. 11).
Digressing, Candyman is a huge hit for Universal Pictures, who is also looking ahead to a monster opening for Halloween Kills this October. In addition to those two franchises, as well as Blumhouse and Jordan Peele’s productions, Universal made noise when they paid $400M for the rights to the next three Exorcist films. With both A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th on the market, could Universal also steal both of these properties away from Warner Bros./New Line? Shit is about to get interesting…
As for Candyman, the majority of critics thought it was sweets to the sweet (85% on RT), while others found razor blades. Our own Meagan Navarro called it “an ambitious and haunting reclamation realized by DaCosta’s bold vision, blending horrors real and supernatural.”
Candyman is an urban legend, a supernatural killer with a hook for a hand summoned by anyone daring to say his name into a mirror five times.
Updating…