Horror film Conjuring a big hit

As if 2020 didn’t bring enough horrors, North American moviegoers seem to crave more.

Fright film The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It earned an estimated $24 million (about R339 million) at the weekend to top the box office as more and more theatre reopen after a bleak year.

The brand new Warner Bros release, the latest in the Conjuring franchise, shouldered aside last weekend’s breakthrough boxoffice leader, A Quiet Place:

Part II.

”Its result was considered especially positive for Warner since Conjuring is already available online to HBO Max subscribers at no extra cost.

“The film again has Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as paranormal investigators grappling with demonic nastiness.”

Quiet Place, another scare film, directed by John Krasinski and starring his wife Emily Blunt, took in $19.5 million for the Friday-through-Sunday period, down from last weekend’s $48 million but still considered a solid result with 75% of theatres now open.

The Paramount film, about a family in a post-apocalyptic world haunted by fierce but mostly unseen monsters, is slated to become the quickest film to cross the $100 million mark in North America since Covid-19 plunged the world – and the film industry – into crisis.

“The landscape is becoming competitive again,” Hollywood Reporter quoted Warner executive Jeff Goldstein as saying.

“This is a great sign of bigger things to come in the summer months.”

In third place was Disney’s family-friendly Cruella, an origin story based on its popular One Hundred and One Dalmatians. With Emma Stone as the sneering title villain, the live-action film took in $11.2 million.