Get Out, the directorial debut by Jordan Peele, crushed the competition at the box office over the Oscar weekend, bringing in an estimated $30.9 million dollars.
For a film that started with a bit of skepticism from fans due to the director’s background in comedy, Get Out succeded on every level this weekend. Not only did it debut at number one, the film currently holds a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes with 134 positive reviews. It also earned a A- Cinemascore from viewers of the film, which, accordind to deadline, is almost unheard of for a horror film, as horror films, “Typically (these movies) are lucky to earn a B or B+, and that’s considered awesome, but Get Out is in rare air alongside The Conjuring 1 and 2 which both received A- grades.”
Get Out also debuted on fewer screens (2,781) than recent horror films, with stiffer competition for show times due to a larger amount of high profile and popular films. Earlier horror flms this season such as Split and The Bye Bye Man did not face this level of competition, which makes the success of Get Out even more significant. Split was able to earn $40 million during its first weekend, and during its extended run at number one, it was surrounded by box office bombs such as xXx: The Return of Xander Cage and Rings.
In comparison, Get Out had to contend with The LEGO Batman Movie, John Wick Chapter 2, and Fifty Shades Darker which all continue to earn healthy returns at the box office. Get Out also had to deal with a potentially smaller viewership due to its R-rating, which may have excluded the younger teen audiences that flocked to see the Pg-13 rated Split.
With a summer blockbuster level of competition this March (Logan, Kong: Skull Island, Beauty and the Beast, Ghost in the Shell), it will be interesting to see how Get Out fares in coming weeks and if it is able to come close to Split’s final box office total (which should end up north of $140 million).
Stay tuned for further coverage of Get Out’s box office fate and check out the Horror News Network Review here.
