Not a great year for Wes Craven so far. Scream 4 has, to date (as of this last weekend), earned about 31,000,000 at the American box office. Meanwhile, the indie horror flick Insidious has earned $44 million. Admittedly, the former’s been out only two weeks to the latter’s four. However, Scream 4 saw a frightening (do you see what I did there?) 62% drop from its first weekend, whereas Insidious dropped a paltry 23% from it’s third frame. More to the point, Insidious actually still drew more per theater this weekend; $2445 per screen vs. $2122 for Scream 2.
Oh yeah, and Scream 4 had a production budget of $40, whereas Insidious cost one and a half million. I’m sure Scream 4 laid out a lot more on advertising, as well. Considering Insidious probably hit the break even point when it garnered about $3 million at the box office, well, even if Scream 4 limps into a small profit after foreign and home video revenues, it surely isn’t going to reap the tens of millions of profits of Insidious. Not exactly Iron Man money, but pretty sweet.
Score one for the little guy. (It should be noted that Insidious doesn’t have significantly better reviews than Scream 4 or anything. I guess that series is just played out.)
