Scream Opening Box Office Slays Spider-Man: No Way Home to Take Top Spot

Scream's projected $36 million opening weekend would make it the best of the franchise and give it the top spot over Spider-Man: No Way Home. This is the fifth film in the meta-horror franchise, which began in 1996 with Wes Craven's original slasher classic of the same name. This new Scream follows a new version of the Ghostface killer who is dedicated to create a "re-quel," combining fresh new characters (in this case, young folks who are related to people from the original films) with legacy characters. The latter group includes Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), and Dewey Riley (David Arquette), who have appeared in all five films in the franchise. Marley Shelton has also returned as Judy Hicks, a character introduced in 2011's Scream 4.

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Although the Scream series is less robust than some of the slasher franchises it pokes fun at, including Friday the 13th and Halloween which have 12 entries apiece, the original trilogy was a box office juggernaut the likes of which the slasher genre had never seen. All three films in the original trilogy, which ended in 2000, were the top-grossing slasher films of all time until 2018, when Blumhouse's Halloween swooped in to nab the top slot. However, they are still holding strong on the all-time list, with Scream's lifetime gross of $103 million keeping it holding strong at #2, followed by Scream 2's $101 million and Scream 3's $89 million.

Per Variety, Scream has already taken in $30.6 million at the box office in its opening weekend and will take the top spot at the box office away from the juggernaut, Spider-Man: No Way Home. It's poised to reach a four-day total of $35 million by the end of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday. This will give it the best opening weekend of the entire franchise, just squeaking ahead of Scream 3, which had $34.7 million, and Scream 2 at $32.9 million.
Scream 5 2022 Ghostface with knife

Scream's box office opening is getting a bit of a boost because of the four-day holiday weekend, but this is still a mighty impressive showing for January horror during a pandemic surge. There is also a possibility for it to dominate the next two weekends, as the next major wide release films of 2022 - Roland Emmerich's disaster film Moonfall and Kenneth Branagh's second Agatha Christie adaptation Death on the Nile - aren't coming out until early February. If Scream experiences a significant drop, Spider-Man: No Way Home could crawl back up to the top before February hits, though that seems increasingly unlikely.

With this opening weekend gross, Scream 2022 has already made 92% of the money that the previous entry Scream 4 made in its entire domestic run. While it still seems unlikely that it will break records in this unpredictable box office era, if it continues to play as strongly as it has opened, it might just be able to compete with its original pre-pandemic peers. At the very least, it might be able to eye knocking Freddy vs. Jason out of the #5 spot and join the original trilogy as one of the highest-grossing slashers of all time.