While You Weren't Watching, The Boogeyman Became A Box Office Horror Hit

It may feel like a somewhat distant memory now, but an adaptation of Stephen King's short story "The Boogeyman" hit theaters in the beginning of June. It was pretty much buried right off the bat, as "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" sucked up most of the oxygen in the room. Other big movies such as "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts" and "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" would overshadow it even further in the following weeks. Even so, while all of us weren't paying any attention, the movie actually became a sneaky little hit for Disney's 20th Century Studios.

According to The Numbers, "The Boogeyman" has earned $82.3 million worldwide, as of this writing. That includes $43.2 million from North American audiences, to go with $39.1 million from overseas. Given that the movie had a somewhat muted $12.3 million opening weekend domestically, this is pretty impressive. The film has legged out to multiply that number 3.5 times, all while pulling in solid numbers from international moviegoers as well.

Director Rob Savage's adaptation of King's work was produced for $35 million (not accounting for marketing), so it's not exactly a home run for Disney. That said, it's still a solid result and, moreover, let us not forget that this movie was originally going to debut directly on Hulu. So this is all money that the studio was really never going to get, had it simply pressed forward with a direct-to-streaming strategy. Plus, the theatrical run will only help draw more attention to the inevitable streaming release, which will help its prospects on Hulu in the end anyhow. A win-win.

Despite the fact that this kind of happened without anyone really noticing (or at least not making much note of it), this is not all that surprising. Not just because we're dealing with a story by Stephen King, the guy who wrote "It" and, in turn, gave us the biggest horror movie of all time. But because in the aftermath of 2020, horror has been the most consistently reliable genre out there. Sure, we've had the occasional misfire such as "Renfield" but, for the most part, horror has very much stayed winning.

The year's first big hit was "M3GAN," which made $180 million worldwide against a mere $12 million budget. Then there's "Scream VI," which sits at $168 million globally and made even more than last year's "Scream" ($138 million). We've also got "Evil Dead Rise" sitting pretty at $146 million – yet another movie that was originally supposed to go direct-to-streaming but instead turned into a theatrical hit. Add "Cocaine Bear" ($89 million worldwide) and "The Pope's Exorcist" ($75 million worldwide) to the list as well. The genre's not exactly bulletproof, but it's the safest bet Hollywood has right now.

Looking at the bigger picture, it's highly likely we'll see fewer and fewer movies going directly to streaming, unless they're made by Netflix. Disney, Warner Bros., and just about every other studio is seeing the continued value in theatrical releases despite streaming being touted just a couple of years ago as the unquestioned future. It turns out that having people pay to see your movie is a solid business strategy.