This image released by Cineverse Entertainment shows David Howard Thornton in a scene from “Terrifier 3.” (Jesse Korman/Cineverse Entertainment via AP)
LOS ANGELES – The gory horror film “Terrifier 3” opened atop the box office this weekend as audiences got into the spirit of Halloween, taking in $18.2 million, according to industry estimates released Sunday.
The latest installment tracking the murderous doings of Art the Clown, written and directed by Damien Leone, beat out “The Wild Robot,” which grossed $13.4 million in its third weekend in North American theaters, Comscore reported.
Rounding out the top 10 domestic releases were “Transformers One” ($3.6 million), “Saturday Night” ($3.4 million), “My Hero Academia: You’re Next” ($3 million), a re-release of 1993’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas” ($2.3 million) and “The Apprentice” ($1.5 million).
Terrifier 3 is a Christmas slasher film written and directed by Damien Leone. It stars Lauren LaVera, Elliott Fullam, David Howard Thornton and Samantha Scaffidi, reprising their roles from the previous films.
The film is a sequel to Terrifier 2 (2022) and will feature possessed survivor Victoria Heyes in a more prominent role.
The fourth feature-length film in the Terrifier franchise centers around Art the Clown, who unleashes chaos on the unsuspecting residents of Miles County as they peacefully drift off to sleep on Christmas Eve.
“This is an outlier of a weekend if ever there was one,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore. “If you had asked anyone a month ago or even a week ago: Would ‘Terrifier 3’ be the number one movie amongst all these major-studio films and awards contenders? To have a movie like this come along just shows you that the audience is the ultimate arbiter of what wins at the box office.”
The young Donald Trump film, “The Apprentice,” opened in 10th place. Distributed by Briarcliff Entertainment in 1,740 theaters, the movie managed a paltry $1.6 million in ticket sales.