This weekend, Universal’s Nope, one of the few remaining tentpoles in a summer box office that is on the upswing, is expected to bring in an estimated $50 million at 3,700 theatres, with a focus on men ages 17 to 34.
Nope is the third horror movie from Oscar winner Jordan Peele. It’s opening in the U.S. and Canada will be higher than that of his first movie, Get Out, which opened in 2017 with $33.3 million, but it will be lower than that of his next movie, Us, which opens in 2019 with $71.1 million. Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions is in charge of making the movie. Us had the best start of any original R-rated horror movie in the United States. Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t have any reviews for Nope yet, but critics loved to Get Out, which got a 98 percent Certified Fresh rating, and they also liked Us, which got a 93 percent Certified Fresh rating. Get Out got an A- on the CinemaScore, while Us got a B.
In Nope, Daniel Kaluuya (who has worked with Jordan before) and Keke Palmer play horse ranchers OJ and Emerald Haywood, who find something amazing and dangerous in the sky above their property. Right next to their ranch is Jupiter’s Claim, a family-friendly theme park and petting zoo based on a sanitized version of the California Gold Rush and its aesthetics. Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun), a former child star with a tabloid-tragic past that he has spent his whole life trying to get away from, owns and runs it with evangelical pride. He has also seen the show in the sky, and he tells the people who visit his theme park about it.
Watch the first look at Jordan Peele’s horror movie “Nope” in the movie’s trailer.
Nope, which was shot in the Agua Dulce desert in northern Los Angeles County, has the highest budget of Peele’s three movies, at $68 million after-tax breaks in California. This is more than Us, which cost $20 million before production and advertising costs, and Get Out, which only cost $4.5 million. Peele put the film Nope in Imax. Both of these movies made a lot of money for Uni. Get Out made $124.8 million and Us made $119 million.
At 2 hours and 15 minutes, Nope is also the longest movie Peele has ever made.
Universal began the campaign exactly one year after the first showing of Nope by putting out a mysterious teaser poster. During Super Bowl LVI, the studio showed the first trailer live. It quickly became the most talked about thing on Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit. RelishMix, a social media analytics company, said that Nope’s 24-hour online traffic was close to 22 million, which was more than Sony’s Uncharted (12.5 million) and Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (11.7 million), and more than Disney/Moon Marvel’s Knight series (11 million) (9.5M).
Being Mortal, starring Keke Palmer of “Nope,” was shut down after a complaint against Bill Murray.
Also, Nope was the first R-rated movie to get help from NBCUniversal’s Symphony program. This program promotes certain tentpole movies from Universal across the conglomerate’s sister brands and businesses. The Jupiter’s Claim ride at Universal Studios Hollywood and commercials on NBCUni shows like American Ninja Warrior, America’s Got Talent, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and WWE Raw was all part of these efforts.
Even though Nope will have a bigger opening than Where the Crawdads Sing ($17.2M) and Paws of Fury ($6.3M) did last weekend, don’t expect this weekend’s total box office for all movies to beat the same weekend in 2019. That’s when Disney’s “live-action” The Lion King opened to a huge $191.8M, bringing the total sales to $263.9M, making it the second-highest-grossing weekend of 2019. Due to the $357.1M opening of Avengers: Endgame, the weekend of April 26–28 brought in the most money ever.
Again, what we need at the box office in 2022 is more wide releases, and we’re about to head into a fall with a lot of adult movies that aren’t tentpoles.
