Him Stomps Opening Weekend: Small Wins, Big Yawns, and the Weekend Ugly Truth

Avery Sinclair here, ready to spill the tea with a straight face and zero sugar: the opening day for Him brought in $6.47 million, a figure The Numbers confirms, and yes, the numbers crowd must be celebrating their “scientific” accuracy while the rest of us wonder if the film is a horror movie or a shout into a void. This supernatural psychological sports horror, produced by Jordan Peele and starring Marlon Wayans, is being framed as a contender for the weekend with a tidy projection of around $15 million in total, per The Hollywood Reporter. If you were holding your breath for a jaw-dropping box office moment, you might have to exhale slowly and recalibrate your expectations, because that forecast reads more like a cautious nod than a victory parade.

On the other side of the ledger, the Japanese animated action flick Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – the Movie Infinity Castle slid into second place with $4.565 million in its latest theater sprint. It’s the kind of steady, daylight-stealing performance that makes you wonder if cinemas should rename themselves Demon Slayer Debriefing Rooms because the anime feature clearly has legs and a built-in fan base that refuses to retire. In third, The Conjuring: Last Rites marked its third Friday in theaters with about $3.7 million, a respectable echo in a franchise that still knows how to pull the horror crowd when the lights go down and the trailers get loud.

Fourth place found Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, the third and final bow for the beloved period drama, earning $1.94 million on its second Friday. The Post’s verdict that the film is “legitimately engrossing” may be a spoiler for fans who swoon at Regency manners and long-lashed heroines, but box office data usually travels on different rails than critical adjectives. And rounding out the top five, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, which the Post dismissed as a “big bag of BS,” managed a $1.4 million tally on its opening weekend. The release pattern here reads like a mixed bag of tentpole ambitions and indie-like misfires, with a few franchises still stubbornly clinging to relevance in an era where streaming clings to the same couch as theater.

The overarching takeaway? The market temperature remains tepid for audacious, high-gloss premieres, while proven brands keep squeezing out modest returns. Him may be the headline grabber on a slow Friday, but the real conversation sits in the margins: will this film’s weekend total finally hit the projected $15 million mark, or will it plateau early, leaving critics to write a cautious postmortem about risk, hype, and the age of the midrange genre project? The numbers tell a story, and it’s not a neon-lit victory lap; it’s more like a cautious stroll through a crowded mall, where every storefront promises something bigger than its neighbor but delivers something closer to “meh with occasional jump scares.”

If you think this is all just a fever dream of glossy studios and picky critics, you’re not alone. The data points keep drifting in: Demon Slayer shows staying power, Conjuring keeps tapping into familiar fears, Downton Abbey holds a steady glow for a demographic that still loves a well-tailored tea scene, and a handful of new titles struggle to find their footing in a landscape where audience attention is a scarce currency. The weekend forecast remains a gauge, not a verdict, and the audience meter continues to tick away with binary reviews: either you show up for a familiar ride or you gamble on something new that might not land at all.

As for what to watch next, keep an eye on Him’s total as it climbs toward that $15 million ceiling, whether Demon Slayer maintains its momentum, and whether The Conjuring franchise can translate a third Friday into a lasting weekend spike. The real plot twist could be right around the corner, lurking in the margins of the box office ledger.

Sources: Celebrity Storm and The Numbers, The Hollywood Reporter, The Los Angeles Times, The Post, box office reporting outlets
Attribution: Creative Commons Licensed (GO)