The reboot of The Grudge is the first new wide release of 2020 and with that comes some impressive Thursday night preview numbers from the latest horror effort from Sony Screen Gems.
The Grudge grossed $1.8 million in Thursday night previews from 2,393 locations last night that began at 7:00 PM. For comparison’s sake, the start is off from the studio’s Escape Room last year, but that was PG-13 with showtimes starting at 4:00 PM for a $2.3 million preview night. Escape Room simply had more time during its previews to make more money and the demo wasn’t muted because of the P3-13 rating. Escape Room took its $2.3 million preview numbers to a weekend gross of $18.2 million, significantly up from the $10-14 million the film was tracking at.
The good news for The Grudge may stop here, however. The social media response has been atrocious for the film and it’s possible it could’ve overcome its 17% rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes but the audience score isn’t much better at 20%. The exits were also pretty bad with the film putting up a 1/2 star rating from PostTrak. Males over 25 at 30% were last night’s biggest crowd for The Grudge, followed by men under 25 (27%), females under 25 (25%) and then women over 25 (18%). The Grudge only cost $10 million to make so I think Sony will still win with this one, especially once foreign grosses are factored in.
