Lionsgate hiring Renny Harlin (A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, Deep Blue Sea) to reboot The Strangers with a trilogy of new movies seemed like a bizarre decision at the time it was first announced, and the unconventional approach became even more baffling when the deeply lackluster The Strangers: Chapter 1 was […]
Lionsgate hiring Renny Harlin (A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, Deep Blue Sea) to reboot The Strangers with a trilogy of new movies seemed like a bizarre decision at the time it was first announced, and the unconventional approach became even more baffling when the deeply lackluster The Strangers: Chapter 1 was released in 2024. That movie kicked the new trilogy off on a dull note, to say the least, with many fans hoping that The Strangers: Chapter 2 would course correct and answer the big question on everyone’s mind: WHY?!
Lionsgate and Harlin even went back to the drawing board and shot additional material for Chapter 2 based on the response to Chapter 1, lending further credence to the belief that the second movie would surely be putting the first to shame. Unfortunately, early reviews spelled doom for Chapter 2, and the film’s opening weekend reflected those rotten first reviews.
The Strangers: Chapter 2 had the lowest opening weekend in the franchise’s history, scaring up just $5.9 million in 2,690 theaters across the United States over the weekend.
For the sake of comparison, Harlin’s The Strangers: Chapter 1 opened to $11.8 million last year, exactly DOUBLE the opening weekend haul of The Strangers: Chapter 2.
Here’s the breakdown of opening weekends for every film in the franchise…
- The Strangers (2008) – $20.9 million
- The Strangers: Prey at Night (2018) – $10.4 million
- The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024) – $11.8 million
- The Strangers: Chapter 2 (2025) – $5.9 million
The good news for Lionsgate is that Chapter 2 has a reported production budget of just $8.5 million. The bad news? The film’s opening weekend suggests that The Strangers: Chapter 3 is destined to be a box office bomb, which begs the question of how Lionsgate should approach the release of the final film in this planned trilogy. Do you give it a pricey marketing push and bring it to theaters as originally planned? Or do you just dump the film to VOD at this point? We’ll keep you posted as we learn more about Lionsgate’s plan for this ill-conceived trilogy.
