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As hard as Evil Dead Burn goes, its opening weekend is shaping up to be a real disappointment.
After weeks of tracking in the $25 million to $30 million range, the latest estimates have the film opening at a brutal $13.7 million domestically. That’s a massive miss and well below where just about everyone expected it to land.
Why?
I have no idea.
The only thing I can even remotely point to is that this was the first genuinely beautiful weekend across much of the Midwest and East Coast since spring. It also landed right in the middle of the FIFA World Cup. I was at my kid’s birthday party, and everywhere I looked, there were dads standing around watching the matches on their phones. Whether either of those things actually had anything to do with the box office, who knows? But something clearly kept people away from theaters this weekend.
Whatever the reason, the result is the same.
Evil Dead Burn has opened significantly below both of its predecessors.
Fede Álvarez‘s Evil Dead (2013) opened to $25.8 million before finishing with $54.2 million domestically and nearly $100 million worldwide. Lee Cronin‘s Evil Dead Rise debuted to $24.5 million and ultimately climbed to $67.2 million domestically and more than $147 million worldwide.
History tells us that horror films opening around $15 million generally finish somewhere between $30 million and $40 million domestically, depending on their legs.
And here’s where I think this gets really ugly.
Next weekend, Christopher Nolan‘s The Odyssey hits theaters, and I think it’s going to extinguish Evil Dead Burn for good.
That’s the real problem.
My prediction is that Burn is going to get absolutely hammered in its second weekend. Horror movies are already notoriously front-loaded, and I wouldn’t be shocked to see a 70% drop. Hell, it could even push 80%.
If that happens, you’re talking about a second weekend somewhere around $3 million to $5 million.
Run that math out, and I think Evil Dead Burn is going to struggle to reach $30 million domestically. Maybe it proves me wrong. Maybe audiences discover it over the coming weeks. I’d love nothing more.
Thankfully, unlike most studio movies, the Evil Dead films are produced on modest budgets and positioned to succeed. So even when a film like Burn underperforms, it can still find a path to profitability. No panic here… yet.
I genuinely think Evil Dead Burn is one of the strongest entries in the franchise. Sébastien Vaniček absolutely understands what makes Evil Dead work, delivering inventive gore, relentless Deadite insanity, and some of the best set pieces the series has seen in years. This wasn’t a case of audiences rejecting a bad movie. They just… didn’t show up.
Thankfully, the future of the franchise isn’t riding on this movie alone. Evil Dead Wrath, directed by Francis Galluppi, is already in production and slated for a 2028 release, so we know another Deadite outbreak is coming no matter what happens here.
Still, it’s hard not to look at Burn‘s ending a little differently now.
What initially felt like an exciting tease for the future suddenly carries a bittersweet weight. Instead of simply setting up the next chapter, it almost feels like a reminder that we may be waiting longer than expected before the Deadites return again.
I hope I’m wrong. I really do. But right now, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a little worried.
Categorized:Box Office News
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