A slow weekend at the box office resulted in Argo grabbing the top spot. It's being said that Hurricane Sandy had an impact on this weekend's box office results, but it doesn't look like any of this week's new movies would have dramatically better results under optimal weather conditions.
Since we're focusing on horror, we're moving right to Silent Hill: Revelation 3D. When you factor in international sales and home video options, this movie will probably end up making money. With that being said, the results are disappointing for its opening weekend, when you consider that the first Silent Hill opened with $20 million in 2006. To be fair, Silent Hill reportedly had more than double the production budget of the sequel, so it isn't surprising that reviews and audience reactions haven't been the most positive.
Paranormal Activity 4 isn't going to get anywhere close to reaching Paranormal Activity 3's $104 million domestic gross, but since the movie cost Paramount $5 million to produce, we don't think they are losing sleep over this. However, if they want to keep producing sequels, they'll need to fix the mistakes that turned away audiences this year.
This movie may be a bit under the radar for non-horror outlets, but Sinister is still performing quite well. This is an R-rated horror movie that is not a sequel/remake and has earned nearly $40 million since opening. With a production budget of $3 million, Sinister's performance is very similar to what we saw with Insidious last year.
Next weekend starts the horror dry spell and we won't see a major horror release until January. Here are the top box office results for this weekend:
1. Argo - $12,355,000
2. Hotel Transylvania - $9,500,000
3. Cloud Atlas - $9,400,000
4. Paranormal Activity 4 - $8,675,000
5. Taken 2 - $8,000,000
6. Silent Hill: Revelation 3D - $8,000,000
7. Here Comes the Boom - $5,500,000
8. Sinister - $5,070,000
9. Alex Cross - $5,050,000
10. Fun Size - $4,060,000