M3GAN’ At Box Office Predictions, Sailing Into Second Place!

There is a new scream queen in Hollywood.

A mean-girl robot in the campy PG-13 horror film “M3gan” (insert snotty hair flip here) is projected to have sold roughly 30% more tickets in the United States and Canada over the weekend than analysts had predicted. The $12 million horror comedy’s sequel is already in the works at Universal Pictures.

Rotten Tomatoes reported that 94 percent of the reviews were favorable. The amount of critical acclaim alone made “M3gan” a triumph: the killer doll is right up there with “mediocre guy attracts supermodel” when it comes to tired movie themes. Finding a new perspective is quite tricky. (Chucky, 35, has been the subject of eight motion pictures and a television series. Since 2014, three movies have used the evil Annabelle as the star.)

In contrast to nuanced dramas, which have suffered, horror movies continue to fare well in theaters because they are entertaining to experience in the dark with strangers.

Young moviegoers prefer to watch them on a large screen with their friends for the most incredible thrill, according to David A. Gross, a film consultant who writes weekly on box office statistics. According to Universal, the average age of the “M3gan” viewership was under 24.

Additionally, “M3gan” is noteworthy because it illustrates how humor has developed as a theatrical genre. Tickets for classic comedies have been hard to come by. The apparent illustration of how the mood has increased in different genres of movies is the Marvel superhero flicks.

The four-foot mechanical doll cheerfully breaks into song, displays odd dance techniques, and cynically slings shade — when she’s not killing people. In some respects, “M3gan” is a comedy masquerading as a horror movie.

Model 3 Generative Android, or “M3gan,” is a term coined by filmmaker, writer, and producer James Wan, who is most known for the “The Conjuring,” “Aquaman,” and “Saw” film series. Megan is how it is pronounced.

Wan took the idea to the megaproducer Jason Blum, whose Blumhouse Productions is connected to Universal, after Warner Bros. passed, partly because it already owns Annabelle. Akela Cooper, known for “Luke Cage” and “Malignant,” wrote the screenplay for “M3gan,” which was directed by relative newcomer Gerard Johnstone.

“M3gan” was supported by Universal with a creative marketing strategy. The studio effectively used TikTok and Twitter, where an account purportedly operated by M3gan started quarreling with one controlled by Chucky.

After three pandemic-wracked years, Hollywood is hopeful that 2023 will herald a return to box office form. According to an intelligence data company, movie theaters in North America sold about $7.5 billion in tickets last year, a 34 percent decline from 2019. That came up to around 626 million tickets overall. Hollywood sold roughly 1.2 billion tickets a year before the coronavirus outbreak in the US and Canada.

According to Gower Street Analytics, global ticket sales for 2022 came to nearly $26 billion, a decrease of about 35% from 2019.

James Cameron’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” (Disney), which has collected an estimated $1.7 billion globally despite a slower-than-expected start and a string of severe winter storms in the United States and Canada, bodes well for a box office comeback. Analysts predict that the pricey “Way of Water” will surpass the $2 billion mark, making it one of the top five best-selling films of all time and supporting Disney’s plans for three additional “Avatar” films.

“The Way of Water” handily won the weekend box office race with an estimated $45 million domestic theater attendance. The animated film “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” (Universal), which had ticket sales of $13.1 million, came in second and was followed by “M3gan” for a three-week domestic total of $88 million ($130.8 million globally).

But dramas still have trouble.

In its third weekend in theaters, Damien Chazelle‘s star-studded “Babylon” (Paramount), an extreme take on the decadence of early Hollywood, struggled to gain momentum, selling only $1.5 million worth of tickets for a new total of $13.5 million. Without considering marketing, the production cost was close to $80 million.