Inside Out 2, featuring anxiety personified, continued to resonate with moviegoers as the No. 1 movie in North America for three consecutive weeks, while its terrifying prequel, A Quiet Place, also struck a cultural nerve and drove better-than-expected ticket sales.
But ticket buyers mostly rejected Kevin Costner's three-hour vanity project “Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1,” which was supposed to be the start of a Western series that was once slated for a streaming service but somehow ended up on the big screen.
Pixar's “Inside Out 2” is on track to earn $55 million in the U.S. and Canada over three weeks, for a total of about $470 million, according to box office analysts' estimates on Saturday. The well-received sequel is on track to earn $1 billion in ticket sales worldwide. No film has reached that level of grossing since “Barbie,” which was released in July 2023.
“A Quiet Place: Day One” was expected to gross about $53 million in domestic ticket sales over the weekend, more than 30 percent above pre-release analyst expectations based on surveys tracking moviegoer interest. Produced by Paramount for an estimated $67 million, “A Quiet Place: Day One” stars Lupita Nyong'o as a cancer patient who, along with her cat, Frodo, must survive a terrifying invasion by aliens with super-sensitive ears.
Prequels are a risk; famous flops include “Mad Max: Furiosa,” “The First Omen” and “Lightyear.” It's hard for studio marketers to build excitement because fans already know what ultimately happens later in the story, and prequels often don't feature the stars that made the franchise popular; Emily Blunt, for example, starred in the first two “A Quiet Place” films.
“Day One's” strong performance is even more impressive considering that its production company, Paramount, has recently been embroiled in a distracting divestiture drama: The company's controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, fired top executives, negotiated a takeover bid, and eventually called it off altogether, causing the stock price to plummet. Despite this turmoil, Paramount's film team managed to get “Day One” to market with ease.
Costner's heavily promoted “Horizon,” which cost an estimated $100 million to make and another $30 million to promote, finished a distant third, and analysts say it's expected to gross $12 million at the box office (ticket sales were split roughly evenly between theaters and studios). Costner had hoped that fans of his hit modern-day Western series “Yellowstone,” especially in the heartland, would flock to theaters, but that proved to be a pipe dream.
Can “Horizon” get back on track in the coming weeks? Box office experts aren't optimistic, citing weak reviews. What's more, ticket buyers gave “Horizon” a B-minus in CinemaScore exit polls, so word of mouth is likely to be bleak.
Warner Bros. plans to release the second installment on Aug. 16. Costner has already begun production on a third film and has announced a fourth.
Warner Bros. was acting merely as a consignment agent, meaning the studio had no investment in the film and therefore no financial risk. (The company takes about 8 percent of ticket sales as a service fee.) To finance the project, Costner mortgaged his property in Santa Barbara, Calif., and raised backing from private investors. He left “Yellowstone” to focus on “Horizon.”
“There are movies that defy the odds, break the mold and prove the doubters wrong,” says David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box-office performance. “In this case, the mold remains the same: Westerns are out of fashion, and there hasn't been a successful Western franchise in theaters in the last 50 years.”