Photo credit: DC Studios.
As DC Studios continues to try different things to diversify the DC brand, one of its early swings, Clayface, has proven to be a homerun with audiences and critics, but the biggest battle for Clayface wasn’t ever going to be its reception, but its return. Though it finished in 7th this weekend, the film still made over $6M domestic in its third weekend, pushing it past the $100M mark. This has moved it past The Substance as the highest grossing body horror film ever. There’s three takeaways here:
The coolest takeaway is that there’s a real viability for the body horor in the 2020s. Up until this decade, the highest grossing had been Cronenberg’s The Fly, and while Cronenberg himself has certainly made a name on the body horror genre, it isn’t like the average person loved Cronenberg’s exploration of ‘the new flesh.’ It still lived very much in its own niche. One could argue that Clayface and The Substance being such big hits aren’t because of its genre, rather the DC brand and the comeback buzz surrounding one of the biggest movie stars of all-time. While sure, Demi Moore is beloved, there hasn’t been a film before or since that Mubi has distributed into a zeitgeist hit, and a two and a half hour body horror isn’t selling off of the name value of an actress who hadn’t had a theatrical hit in a decade and a half alone. Elevated horror is in right now, and when done exceptionally well, body horror allows for deeper social commentary because of its allegorical nature, and in an era of looksmaxxing, GLP-1s, and rampant plastic surgery, there are few things that feel timelier than body horror that can touch on societal beauty standards.
The superhero genre can and should do more within the worlds beyond the standard superhero fare. Low budget fare doesn’t give the biggest returns, but it does churn easy profit, and expand the universe for potential IP. These studios should be able to suppplement their tentpoles, and a healthy studio doesn’t just rely on tentpoles to make sure they can pay rent.
But clearly it wasn’t enough? Clayface is the final release of the Safran/Gunn era, as the news broke as I wrote this that the duo have stepped down from DC Studios. It’s hard to determine whether they stepped down or if that’s simple PR, but if Skydance expects tentpole numbers from Clayface or doesn’t want this supplemental material going forward, it’s hard to imagine that they’d stay. That said, if they did step down, it does make sense when you follow the money. Fitch has an 8 debt before EBITDA rate for Skydance, with it being a junk grade stock that’s plunging in value with ~$100B in debt, around $6B in interest added each year, and needing to put out 30 theatrical films per year, despite their operating costs being significantly higher than their competitors because of the junk status. This means: despite the Ellison’s promising Gunn even more resources than he had at Warner, which for the record had a market cap 7x higher than Ellison’s Paramount when Ellison had to take 50% Middle Eastern sovereign funds to even finance this merger after his family’s value dropped over 50% from the start of the merger process to closing and Skydance stock had dipped 40% from when they acquired Paramount, it’s clear there’s no viability to that promise. If the reports were true that that’s what convinced Gunn and Safran to stay on, then it’s clear why they would inform Skydance that they wouldn’t renew their contracts next year. It’s more likely, just from a sheer financial perspective, that DC Studios will be sold to help nail down the debt than Safran and Gunn seeing even more money to expand the universe.
But the top five was interesting this week, because there are four new films.
Godzilla: Minus Zero began its quest for domination. Upon opening, it became the biggest opening ever for a film not in the English language domestically. Not only did it break that record, it shattered it. Hero had the record at around $17M, and this nearly doubled that. While there’s always a chance it’s frontloaded, this tripled the opening of Godzilla: Minus One, showing a massive increase in interest. This seems to have strong word-of-mouth, but the combination of an annoying kid, a somewhat muted kaiju fight, and the fact that Godzilla is barely in a Godzilla movie may mute its legs, but for the sake of the quality of the film, let’s hope it grows legs the way Ghidorah grows heads. Its predecessor grossed $57M domestic, third all-time for a film not in the English language. The record, currently held by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, is $128M. Godzilla has a climb, but it should easily surpass Robert Benigni’s Oscar turn in Life Is Beautiful for the second spot on the list at $57.2M.
There’s the Bill Hader Cat in the Hat. It looks like a bomb. Insert the BIll Hader Stefon ‘surprise’ meme (which isn’t even a surprise! That’s just BIll Hader hiding the fact he’s always breaking on Update sketches). With $10M overseas, it’s paltry $20M opening, an average of less than $5,000 per theatre, is not manageable on a ~$215M breakeven point. I must ask: as somebody who grew up on Dr. Seuss, do children still care? Are those books that have endured the tech generation? Nostalgia-baiting parents only works if it’s a property both the parent and child are interested in, and outside of the Grinch which transcends the work of Seuss, when was the last time there had been any cultural relevance ot the IP? The Lorax? Has it been fifteen years?
Drummer Boy: Angels Studios doing Angels Studios fare around the holiday season. This is going to be a solid low-budget hit with its usual demographics. Good for them.
Ramayana: Rise of a Legend: This is your standard Bollywood blockbuster, but with its U.S. marketing and robust release, it seems like this was expected, at least by Sony, to do larger numbers. It certainly did well enough overseas, but why couldn’t that translate? It’s hard to articulate, but there’s particular sensibilities at play here, both in the feel of the film through the trailers, almost as if it’s a video game, and in its generic story, that the scope doesn’t automatically equate to interest. There’s also cultural differences at play, primarily the kind of picture that resonates, especially factoring in the hero dynamic.
You Can See Everything: We’ve discussed this film in detail in previous box office reports, but it’s cruising. With the recent parodies from Fallon and Jamie Lee Curtis as well as Druski on SNL, it doesn’t seem to be losing its steam culturally, either. It’s now made $79M, and is second behind on Farenheit 9/11 as the highest grossing documentary ever in the U.S. An incredible run for Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim.
The remainder of the top ten are Wildwood, Clayface, Wild Horse Nine, Wicker, and Street Fighter. After nearly a month in theatres, Street Fighter still hasn’t made $100M global. Perhaps, next time there shouldn’t be a $200M+ breakeven point for a Street Fighter movie that doesn’t even give you the tournament, cast three professional wrestlers, and, is, well, a Street Fighter movie. Everything but Wild Horse Nine has been discussed in previous BOR, however, Wildwood is showing stunning legs. Not enough to be profitable, but enough to show a real groundswell of support. This should be a streaming hit. Wild Horse Nine is what you expect from Martin McDonagh and Searchlight: a film designed for awards rather than box office, and small enough to easily turn a profit, especially with $6M at the start of a platform release. You should go see it, though, and can read a spoiler-free review from Dirt Sheet Radio here.
Looking ahead at next week, How to Rob a Bank and Ebenezeer are the big releases. Ebenezeer is the interesting film to follow seeing as it’s a big return for Johnny Depp, and we’ll see how much pull he still has. It’s also the first major Christmas release of the year, which should inflate the box office a bit.
Jameus Mooney is an entertainment writer for Comicbook Clique, having covered the entertainment industry for years. You can follow him on Twitter here, and Letterboxd here. You can also listen to his horror podcast, The 2:17 Horror Podcast, at the DeathArts XIII YouTube channel.