Crawl slithered its way into Thursday night previews and got off to an impressive start.
Crawl grossed $1 million in Thursday night previews starting at 7 PM last night. The film expands to 3,000 theaters today. The response to Crawl has been surprisingly good. The film is currently 89% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and early screenings generated positive buzz for the Sam Raimi-produced R-rated alligator creature feature.
Based on the Thursday preview number, comparisons include Slender Man ($1 million Thursday, $11.3 million opening), and 2016’s The Shallows ($1.3 million Thursday, $16.8 million opening). I’m thinking Crawl is more The Shallows than Slender Man in this situation.
The Dave Bautista and Kumail Nanjiani comedy, Stuber, also got started in Thursday night previews last night with $750,000. The film expands to 3,050 theaters today. The film is tracking in the $7-10 million range now, a bit below by $12 million predictions although I did predict that Crawl would outshine it this weekend. The preview number is just above the $700,000 made by Warner Bros.’ action comedy The Nice Guys back in May 2016, which opened to an underwhelming $11.2 million.
