After weeks of creepy trailers and excellent pre-release buzz, Neon’s long-awaited Longlegs lastly hit theaters this weekend. Directed by Osgood Perkins, consideration on the Maika Monore and Nicolas Cage-led horror thriller has constructed up a whole lot of goodwill, and that seems to have paid off huge time on the theater.

Regardless of some combined impressions, Deadline studies Longlegs has earned $22.6 million domestically. It’s the largest opening up to now of Neon’s seven-year stint, and the largest opening for an authentic horror film this yr. The studio’s undoubtedly pleased with it: in a press launch, it famous the film’s efficiency was much like Blair Witch Venture. “Not since [Blair Witch] has there been an unbiased style movie that out-projected, out-performed and over-indexed so wildly that it appeared to the business it ‘got here out of nowhere.’”

Neon actually went all-out to ensure everybody knew that Longlegs existed. Trailers performed forward of many tentpole motion pictures within the final a number of months, and a advertising and marketing marketing campaign additional inspired viewers to uncover potential secrets and techniques. It additionally helped to cover Cage’s look–in case your film’s already trying creepy as hell, the one approach to see what its co-lead appears like is to metal your self and see the rattling factor. Neon’s distribution boss Elissa Federoff famous the advertising and marketing was “constructed with creativity and creativeness,” and understandably took satisfaction within the studio’s efforts. “We constructed a motion round this movie,” she famous. “When audiences can inform that will probably be authentic and one thing they haven’t seen earlier than, they’ll rally behind it.”

Hail Devil. pic.twitter.com/ZFlLHKIOV9

— NEON (@neonrated) July 14, 2024

As robust as Longlegs did, it nonetheless in the end fell in second place behind Despicable Me 4. The Illumination movie added one other $44.7 million from North America to its haul, bringing its home field workplace to $211.1 million. An extra $88 million oversees places it at $437.8 million worldwide, serving to the bigger Despicable Me franchise cross $5 billion. It’s certainly gonna make more cash over the subsequent few weeks, so get able to carry your youngsters to Minions 3 in 2027. Each Inside Out 2 and A Quiet Place: Day One had been additionally stable earners this weekend, respectively bringing their international totals to $1.35 billion and $203.6 million.

Subsequent weekend’s huge blockbuster is Common and Warner Bros.’ Twisters, which has been increase hype of its personal in current weeks. The next week on July 26 is the long-awaited Deadpool & Wolverine, which is probably going gonna make a lot of cash, particularly since that’s additionally the identical weekend as San Diego Comedian-Con. With how effectively motion pictures have executed on this month and June, it’s exhausting to imagine we had been fretting about theatrical motion pictures a lot again in Could.

Whereas we’re right here, did Longlegs stay as much as its hype, or had been you left questioning what the large deal was? Tell us within the feedback under.