A24 released Ti West‘s new movie X over the weekend – West’s first movie in 10 years! – a slasher that is one of the wilder movies you’ll find playing in mainstream wide release this year. Honestly, the fact that X was even released in theaters was a big win already for the horror genre, and enough fans showed up to make the film nearly $5 million over the weekend.
X was released in 2,865 theaters beginning on Thursday night in several locations, scaring up $4,407,750 million in the United States from Thursday night through Sunday.
The good news here is that a prequel to X has been ordered and in fact it’s already been filmed, with a follow-up titled Pearl teased after the end credits of X in theaters. Rather than a post-credits scene we were treated to an entire teaser trailer, with the upcoming Pearl centered on the movie’s villain. Mia Goth will reprise the role of Pearl, the film set decades prior to X.
West told Bloody Disgusting last week, “I’m very grateful for A24 having done this. Part of the idea of this movie that’s cool to me is that there is a bigger thing to it all. What I can tell you about Pearl, because we’ve already made it and it’s done, is it is very much a story about Pearl. So you will learn more about her. It is stylistically very different from X. You do not need one without the other, but they enrich each other in a specific way. In the way that X is affected, let’s say by 1970s horror independent filmmaking and Americana cinema, Pearl is influenced by a very different era of filmmaking. If we do the third one, it will be affected by a different type of cinema.”
“It’s been amazing. If [A24] didn’t like the script, we just wouldn’t have made the movie,” West added. “They were the only people to make it with. I was in quarantine for two weeks in New Zealand when I wrote Pearl, with this idea of, ‘I don’t know if I could convince them to do it, but if I could write something good enough,’ and Mia [Goth] and I would collaborate over FaceTime. I was like, ‘If we can get something that’s undeniably good enough. If they really believe in this like they say they do, they’ll do it.’ Then A24 called. They believed in it, and we’ve made the second one.
“I’m excited for you to see Pearl in the near future.”
The other new big screen horror release for the week, Iris K. Shim‘s Umma debuted in just 805 theaters over the weekend, scaring up $915,000 in its domestic debut weekend.
Produced by Sam Raimi, Umma follows Sandra Oh as Amanda, living a quiet life with her daughter (Fivel Stewart) on an American farm. But when the remains of her estranged mother arrive from Korea, Amanda becomes haunted by the fear of turning into her own mother.
Iris K. Shim wrote the script and directed Umma.
The post Ti West’s ‘X’ Pulls in $4.4 Million in Debut Weekend; Prequel ‘Pearl’ Coming Soon! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.