‘Primate’ Scares Up $13.4 Million at the Worldwide Box Office in Debut Weekend
From director Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down, The Strangers: Prey at Night), Paramount’s Primate kicks off the year with something a little different: a killer chimp slasher movie. How did this rabid chimpanzee fare at the box office in its debut weekend? Primate had a strong start here in the United States, scaring up $11.3 […]
From director Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down, The Strangers: Prey at Night), Paramount’s Primate kicks off the year with something a little different: a killer chimp slasher movie.
How did this rabid chimpanzee fare at the box office in its debut weekend? Primate had a strong start here in the United States, scaring up $11.3 million across 2,964 U.S. theaters.
Primate debuted in the #2 spot on the U.S. charts, behind Avatar: Fire and Ash.
Worldwide, the rated “R” Primate debuted to $13.4 million at the box office.
The reported production budget for Primate was somewhere in the ballpark of $21 million, and conventional wisdom would suggest that the film needs to make around $45 million at the box office in order to become profitable. That’s factoring in the film’s marketing budget, which is not part of the production budget, and the fact that movie theaters share in the profits.
But no matter how you slice it, $11.3 million is a solid start for a January horror movie about a murderous chimp. To bring a little context into the conversation, that’s a higher opening weekend here in the States than many of last year’s horror movies including Wolf Man, M3GAN 2.0, Companion, Heart Eyes, Until Dawn, Bring Her Back, and The Strangers: Chapter 2, and it’s pretty close to the $11.7 million US debut of Stephen King film The Long Walk.
Johannes Roberts co-wrote Primate with Ernest Riera. The horror movie stars Johnny Sequoyah and Oscar®-winning actor Troy Kotsur (CODA) in his first horror role.
Here’s the plot: “A group of friends’ tropical vacation turns into a terrifying, primal tale of horror and survival.”
Meagan Navarro wrote in her review for Bloody Disgusting, “Johannes Roberts’ latest is a lean, mean horror throwback, wearing its influences on its sleeves while managing to inject enough freshness into the familiar concept through slick technical precision and a constant mounting of dread and death. It’s also not without humor. Primate may take its crazed beast with utmost seriousness, but it’s not afraid to get playful with its concept either.”
Primate is the debut theatrical release from Walter Hamada’s new Paramount genre label 18Hz Productions. Up next from the label is director André Øvredal’s new film Passenger.
