Backrooms Pulls $10.4M in Previews, Aims for $70-80M Opening
A24's liminal-horror gamble just printed eight figures before Friday lunch. The Backrooms is about to be a box office event.
Five Nights at Freddy's pulled about $10.3 million in its own Thursday previews, which makes the Backrooms figure narrowly higher and the closest comp anyone in the trade has been willing to float.
If the weekend hits the high end of that window, Backrooms becomes one of the largest horror openings of the year and one of A24's biggest theatrical bows to date. The film expands a piece of internet folklore (the noclipped office space, the buzzing fluorescents, the hum that lives behind drywall) into something a multiplex can sell popcorn against.
The interesting part is what the preview number says about the audience. Liminal-space horror is a register that lives almost entirely on phone screens. Watching it work on a theatrical scale, with strangers, in the dark, is its own experiment. A $10 million Thursday says the experiment is selling tickets, at minimum.
Full weekend numbers land Sunday morning.