A middling CinemaScore rating and soft Friday grosses mean that Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is opening below expectations.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is opening in line with our box office predictions, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. After posting a pretty solid preview number on Thursday, Deadline is reporting that the movie’s box office has cooled a bit, with it only on track for an opening in the $42-44 million range. That’s below what Ghostbusters: Afterlife opened with in 2021, and the pandemic badly hampered those figures. Sony was likely hoping for a finish in the $60 million-ish range, which would have boded well for the extended Ghostbusters universe the company is building with their Ghost Corps brand.
Most troubling is that Frozen Empire has only managed a B+ CinemaScore, a stark contrast to the “A” score recent hits like Bob Marley: One Love and Dune: Part Two managed. Afterlife managed an A – score, suggesting audiences don’t like this sequel as much as they enjoyed the last one (check out our Ghostbusters rankings here). While a $40 million plus opening isn’t a disaster, if the movie doesn’t hit at least $100 million domestically, it seems unlikely the Ghostbusters franchise will continue on the big screen anytime soon unless they greatly reduce the budget. The movie has a reported $100 million budget, meaning it should break even by the time the foreign grosses come in, but so far, this is a middling opening.
However, the weekend’s only other wide new-release movie, Immaculate, is tanking, with Deadline projecting a $5 million finish at best. The deadly C CinemaScore suggests horror fans are not satisfied with this artsy Neon-produced chiller. The movie would have likely been an arthouse release were it not for the fact that Sydney Sweeney’s career has gone into overdrive following the success of her rom-com, Anyone But You. Despite its horror trappings, that was a pretty mainstream flick, and Immaculate is anything but.
Check back for our full box office wrap-up tomorrow!