In the face of a monolith Marvel Studios movie this weekend, Neon‘s summer shocker at the box office, Longlegs, will become the studio’s highest-grossing movie in its history, surpassing its Best Picture and multi-Oscar winner Parasite ($53.3 million). This is all going down Friday.
The Oz Perkins-directed and -written movie starring Maika Monroe grossed $1.3M on Thursday. taking its second week to $18.9M, and running total to $51.8M.
Neon pulled off this box office success with an avant garde P&A that cost under $10M, executed in cryptic clips leading up to a trailer. The wonder of the entire campaign is that it hid Oscar winner Nicolas Cage.
Longlegs is the top-grossing R-rated horror film of 2024. In its second week of release it became the highest-grossing indie horror film of the last 10 years, besting A24’s Talk to Me which tapped out at $48M after 91 days in the marketplace.
All in all, Longlegs is part of a diversified, rebounding summer box office after the marketplace suffered from the lack of product during the strikes. On Thursday night, as we previously told you, Deadpool & Wolverine clocked the best previews for an R-rated movie at $38.5M.