‘Until Dawn’ Scares Up $8 Million in Domestic Box Office Debut

The word-of-mouth for Until Dawn hasn’t been great, with Sony’s video game adaptation currently “rotten” on Rotten Tomatoes with a 53% Tomatometer score. The film’s audience score is a bit higher at 69%, but most fans and critics seem to agree that the film misses the mark and doesn’t satisfyingly translate the video game into a terrifying big screen experience.

That’s probably why Until Dawn didn’t make much of a splash at the box office over the weekend, scaring up just $8 million in 3,055 theaters here in the United States. The film debuted in the #5 spot on the domestic box office charts, with most horror fans choosing Ryan Coogler’s vampire film Sinners in its second weekend over Until Dawn in its opening weekend.

Sinners, for the sake of comparison, made an additional $45 million at the domestic box office in its second weekend, just a few million dollars shy of what it made in its first weekend. And therein lies the difference between strong word-of-mouth and negative word-of-mouth.

Worldwide, Until Dawn has currently pulled in $18.1 million. The good news for Sony and its Screen Gems division is that the horror movie’s production budget was a reported $15 million, so it will probably end up being profitable by the end of its theatrical run.

From director David F. Sandberg (Lights Out, Annabelle Creation, Shazam) and writer Gary Dauberman (It, The Nun), Until Dawn is now playing in theaters nationwide.

“One year after her sister Melanie mysteriously disappeared, Clover and her friends head into the remote valley where she vanished in search of answers. Exploring an abandoned visitor center, they find themselves stalked by a masked killer and horrifically murdered one by one…only to wake up and find themselves back at the beginning of the same evening.

“Trapped in the valley, they’re forced to relive the nightmare again and again – only each time the killer threat is different, each more terrifying than the last.

“Hope dwindling, the group soon realizes they have a limited number of deaths left, and the only way to escape is to survive until dawn.”

The video game adaptation’s cast includes Ella Rubin (The Idea of You), Michael Cimino (“Never Have I Ever”), Ji-young Yoo (“Expats”), Odessa A’zion (Hulu’s Hellraiser), Peter Stormare (Clown, John Wick 2), Maia Mitchell and Belmont Cameli.

Blair Butler (The Invitation) wrote the original draft, and Gary Dauberman (Salem’s Lot) worked on the script. The film is said to be “an R-rated love letter to the horror genre.”

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