...trickling in from BO twitter:

$16.70m PURGE
$6.55m INTERNSHIP
$6.10m F&F6 (-43 %)
$6.05m NOW YOU SEE ME (-40 %)
$3.60m EPIC (-14 %)
$3.35m AFTER EARTH (-66 %)
$3.21m STID (-28 %)
$2.32m H3 (-56 %)
$1.67m IM3 (-26 %)
$1.35m GATSBY (-31 %)

I love it when a small movie makes loads of money unexpectedly and many "blockbusters" underperform.

I'll ask the question in here too: When was the last time a horror film was the #1 movie in June? Or at all in summer outside of August (And legit-horror, not sorta-semi-horror)?

BO sees a $36m Weekend for PURGE:

http://www.boxoffice.com/statistics/bo_ ... 2013-06-08

Well, SCOOBY DOO (2002), HULK (2003) and DODGEBALL (2004) were pure Horror for me

But seriously, if you do not count the Jack Nicholson movies WOLF (1994) and THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK (1987) as Horror, you have to go back to 1980 (THE SHINING - Nicholson again) or 1979 (ALIEN) to see a Horror movie top the Charts in June...

What, you mean, like The Purge?

I can just think of The Haunting in 99, and What Lies Beneath in 2000. They were number one in June, and they're openings adjust to 52 and 43 million respectively. But yeah, they both were great casts, and sizable marketing campaigns. Got to really chalk this up to the marketing campaign. What's funny is is I always remember the Haunting's final gross was a little lame, but I forgot The Blair Witch Project opened wide the following weekend and ate into most of it's audience.

I wonder if this hits 40 million will it be enough to hit 100 million? I really wanted to see it, but I'm surprised almost everyone thinks it's terrible. Same thing with Daybreakers, but I actually really enjoyed that one.

Internship did solid, but I actually think Purge cut into it quite a bit. I think under different circumstances it would have done 25 million.

I thought the same.

Honestly, The Purge is no more horror than Assault on Precint 13 which is not a horror flick. The Purge has horror elements because a couple of characters wear masks, but this really is even less a horror flick than The Strangers...

He specifically asked for "legit-horror" and not "sorta semi-horror".

Jon, the answer to your question is: never.

The Haunting is absolutely a horror film, man. Whether scary or not is a different question, but The Haunting is horror.

I would see ALIEN and SHINING as real Horror movies and they were no. 1 in June of 1979/1980...

The Purge's number is pretty shocking. I expected it to open at #1 and narrowly beat The Internship.

To the surprise of few, The Internship will be more of a The Dilemma than Wedding Crashers.

I feel like this is going to be a summer of surprises after the mega overperformances of this and Now You See Me.

Strong holds for NYSM and Epic.

I would like to add that THE HAUNTING and WHAT LIES BENEATH are July movies, not June movies...

See Jon, this is the way to get an answer here at WOKJ; always claim something as absolute, because there'll always be someone ready to prove you wrong.

Agreed, I actually really liked The Haunting when it came out. Overblown CGI aside, the first half is actually on par with the original, which I thought always had room to improve. What Lies Beneath is more of a horror thriller in the vein of Hitchcock, but it scared me a great deal more with it's subtlety mixed with a shit load of jumping scares. Probably Zemeckis' most underrated film. Both are more horror then The Purge which looks more like Panic Room, or in this case Panic House.

Yes, The Haunting is horror. I disliked it back in 1999 at the cinema.

What Lies Beneath is not horror at all. It's a mystery thriller. Hitchcock didn't make horrors. He made suspense/mystery thrillers.

Using Psycho (if you do) as an example of Hitchcock being a horror director is proof enough that you don't know anything about Hitchcock.

It's still marketed as a horror film - it's being sold not on action sequences, humor, Oscar-caliber performances, but on the thrills from the threat of violent carnage. That's not something that normally sells the best this time of year (May-July, prime blockbuster months), hence the question.

Wait, The Strangers wasn't a horror film now?

Wonderful number for The Purge, it has a small shot at cracking $40M for the weekend. I know we've had a bunch of these already, but I would have loved to see someone create a Purge OD > Star Trek Into Darkness OD, Hangover 3 OD AND After Earth OD thread.

Speaking of Star Trek, that hold is crazy good. And even more so for Epic! School is out for the summer.

Top Ten complete in 1st post...

It definitely was. I don't know what anyone is talking about in regards to that .


Amazing for The Purge. 100 Million is out-of-the question though. It won't be terribly leggy. Regardless this is a huge success.

Too bad Father's Day isn't this weekend - some holdovers could have done even better...

It was, though some can interpret it differently. That said, The Purge is not the same as The Strangers.

Don't get Pandya's weekend guesstimate for Epic. Didn't he notice that schools are mostly out judging from the Thu-Fri increases? Though it's still looking at a $11-12 million weekend, which is really strong.

CinemaScores:

The Purge - C
The Internship - B+

You know what surprises me? It seems obvious that audiences don't like horror movies at all. Look at CinemaScores for Evil Dead, The Purge (I will assume Jon's standpoint here as The Purge was actually marketed as horror), Mama, The Cabin in the Woods etc. Barely any jorror films, no matter how successful, get good CinemaScores. So I wonder why the hell they still storm out to see certain horror films in masses?