It Floats!

With a monstrous $123.4 million over the three-day weekend, Warner Bros. and New Line's It has shattered a number of box office records. It now holds the crown for the largest September opening of all time, the largest Fall opening, and the largest opening for a horror film. The film, based on the Stephen King novel, accounted for more than 75% of the combined gross for the weekend's top twelve, and single-handedly improved what had become a disappointing year at the box office.

The horror film's debut was the widest opening ever for an R-rated film, and the total was just under the record for the largest opening for any R-rated movie behind Deadpool's $132.4 million. Internationally, It delivered $62 million in 46 markets for a $179 million global debut. The overseas numbers include record breaking openings in the U.K. ($12.3m), Russia ($6.7m), Australia ($5.9m), Brazil ($5.6m), Netherlands ($1.4m) and Poland ($1.15m). All of this on a budget of $35 million. Horror movies tend to be front-loaded, but with any kind of legs, It could be looking at a total box office figure unprecedented for the genre.

Pagebreaks Take: No surprise, Warner Bros. has already announced the sequel to It, which is really the 2nd half of the 1,000+ page King opus. The second part of the film, like the book, will jump ahead in time and focus on the Loser's Club as adults. No release date yet, but director Andy Muschietti has suggested 2019 would be the earliest.

#movies