‘Wolf Man’ Seeks to Put Blumhouse Back on Box Office Map After a Quiet 2024

Blumhouse Pictures, the kings of horror at the box office for the past decade, didn’t make a big splash at the box office in 2024. This year looks to be much different, starting this weekend with Leigh Whannell’s “Wolf Man.”

According to exhibitors and rival distributors, “Wolf Man” is projected for a 3-day opening in the high teens. With MLK Day included, the Universal release is expected to earn a 4-day opening above $20 million.

This would be a higher opening than any of Blumhouse’s launches in 2024, as their last January release, “Night Swim,” and their September remake of “Speak No Evil” both opened to around $11 million. “Speak No Evil” was Blumhouse’s top film last year with $36.9 million domestic and $75.7 million worldwide.

To be clear, none of Blumhouse’s 2024 films were flops, easily clearing their production budgets which never exceeded $15 million. But 2024 was also only the second year in the past decade where Blumhouse did not produce one of the top 5 highest grossing horror films, the other being 2019. Among the films that topped “Speak No Evil” on the charts last year were a pair of indie darlings — Neon’s “Longlegs” and Cineverse’s “Terrifier 3” — as well as Focus’s still-running “Nosferatu.”

It’s rather unusual for Blumhouse to leave such a little impact on the box office. But 2025 could be much different. Along with “Wolf Man,” Blumhouse and Universal will release sequels to three of their recent 2022-23 hits: “M3GAN 2.0” in June, “The Black Phone 2” in October, and “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” in early December.

Before then, they have a pair of original films set up with Jaume Collet-Serra directing Danielle Deadwyler in “The Woman in the Yard” in March and “Drop,” a new thriller from “Happy Death Day” director Christopher Landon, in April.

That stronger slate should increase Blumhouse’s chances of breakout success. In the meantime, it is up to “Wolf Man” to win over horror fans with Whannell’s new take on one of the genre’s oldest concepts. Five years ago, he was successful with his new rendition of “The Invisible Man,” weaving a tale of a gaslit woman haunted by her abusive husband who fakes his death and uses an invisibility suit to torture her. Released weeks before the pandemic shutdown, “The Invisible Man” opened to $28.2 million and grossed $144 million worldwide against a $7 million budget.

Produced on a $25 million budget, “Wolf Man” should be theatrically profitable no matter what. But whether it can match the success of “The Invisible Man” and other Blumhouse hits will come down to whether Whannell’s tale of a horrified mother forced to fight her werewolf-infected husband to protect her child strikes a chord with audiences. Fans of werewolf films are also rather particular about how films present the mythical monsters, so winning over moviegoers with that design will also be key to the film’s word-of-mouth.

While “Wolf Man” is set to take the top of the charts, Sony will also have a presence with the TriStar buddy comedy “One of Them Days,” starring Keke Palmer and SZA as two South L.A. roommates who are forced to go on a mad dash to find rent money by the end of the day. Produced on a $14 million budget co-financed by MACRO Pictures, the film should be modestly successful with a projected $8 million opening weekend.

On the specialty side, Mubi is looking to capitalize on Demi Moore’s Golden Globes win for “The Substance” by re-releasing Coralie Fargeat’s body horror film in 350 theaters this weekend. The re-release won’t have the additional boost of Oscar nominations as the Academy postponed Friday’s announcement to Jan. 23 in light of the Los Angeles wildfires, but Mubi is hoping that renewed buzz around Moore’s performance will attract more moviegoers to the shocking, gory satire after its initial $16.4 million domestic run this past fall.

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