Opening Weekend Forecast: £400,000 – £750,000
Theatrical Total Forecast: £1.5 – £2 million
U.K.-based cinema advertising company Pearl & Dean has released their predicted opening range for Warner Bros.’ They Will Kill You, opening in the U.K./Ireland market this weekend.
Warner Bros. brings a fun, gory, knowingly schlocky B-movie romp to cinemas this weekend in the form of They Will Kill You, about a young woman picked as a sacrifice by a building full of rich folks. These kinds of ultra-violent, exploitation horrors tend to pull in solid numbers by appealing to a core fan-base eager to gorge themselves on blood and spectacular kills. On the more lucrative end, we saw Final Destination: Bloodlines pull in £11.6 million last year, while February’s Scream 7 is at £7.1 million and counting.
On the more modest side in terms of box office is Terrifier 3, coming in at scoring £3.4 million in 2024, or Ready Or Not, with £1.9 million in 2019. That last film shares quite a bit of DNA with They Will Kill You, as they both focus on a female protagonist put in a kill-or-be-killed situation by the ultra-rich. That film’s sequel, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, was earlier slated for release on April 10 but got moved to March 20, possibly to get it in theaters ahead of They Will Kill You.
The question is now whether the marketplace can sustain two such similar films released so close together. Conventional wisdom favours Ready Or Not 2, which is a relatively familiar quantity and has the higher-profile cast. While They Will Kill You does sport known names like Tom Felton and Patricia Arquette, its lead Zazie Beetz has not anchored a major film. One of the breakout stars of TV’s Atlanta, she subsequently took on scene-stealing supporting roles in films like Bullet Train, Deadpool 2, and Joker. While Ready or Not’s Samara Weaving isn’t necessarily a household name, she enjoys a good amount of name recognition among the horror crowd for her starring turn in the first Ready Or Not and Netflix’s The Babysitter, in addition to a standout supporting roll in Scream VI. Furthermore, she is supported in Ready or Not 2 but a host of well-known names, among them Sarah Michelle Gellar, Elijah Wood, and David Cronenberg.
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