A Quiet Place: Day One Breaks The Silence With $53 Million Opening Weekend

Horror movies are historically one of the most dependable genres at the box office, but they've been struggling in 2024. The highest-grossing of the year so far is "Night Swim," a movie about a haunted swimming pool that scraped $54.6 million worldwide — quite a departure from 2023 megahits like "M3GAN" and "Five Nights at Freddy's." But now, "A Quiet Place: Day One" looks set to overtake "Night Swim" in its opening weekend alone, as audiences flock back to theaters for another installment of the high-tension, low-volume horror series.

Written and directed by Michael Sarnoski ("Pig"), with a story writing credit for franchise creator John Krasinski, "A Quiet Place: Day One" is a prequel with mostly new characters (Djimon Hounsou reprises his role from "A Quiet Place: Part II") that's set in the notoriously noisy city of New York. As the movie's opening text notes, NYC regularly has noise levels of around 90 decibels — equivalent to the sound of a "constant scream." That abruptly changes when aliens that hunt by listening for sounds crash down to Earth, leaving everyone with a simple choice: shut up or die. 

"A Quiet Place: Day One" set a new record for the franchise with $22.5 million on its opening day (including $6.8 million from Thursday previews, which also set a new franchise record). It's now on track for the best opening weekend in the series, with Variety forecasting a $53 million debut and the Hollywood Reporter estimating that it could climb to $55 million. "A Quiet Place" rocked the box office in 2018 with a $50.2 million debut, and "A Quiet Place: Part II" scored a $47.5 million opening weekend in 2021, so "Day One" landing so close to those first two movies speaks to how rock-solid consistent this horror franchise has been with audiences.

Just as "M3GAN" gracefully shared the stage with "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish," Sarnoski's "A Quiet Place: Day One" paired nicely with this summer's big animated family hit: "Inside Out 2." Pixar's latest looks set to hold on to its No. 1 spot and add another $60 million to its domestic total over the weekend. At last count its global tally was $863 million, surpassing the original movie (per Deadline), and hitting the billion-dollar mark now looks like a foregone conclusion. This kind of counter-programming is great for exhibitors, as family groups and horror fans alike are simultaneously drawn to theaters. The business will be very welcome after a rough start to the year.

There's also a fresh offering for yeehaw connoisseurs, in the form of "Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1." The first installment of a passion project directed (and largely financed) by Kevin Costner is on track to gross $12-13 million in its opening weekend, which is almost on par with Costner's 2004 movie "Open Range" ($14 million), but only if you don't take 20 years of inflation into account. 

With a substantial budget in the broad range of $50-100 million, the first "Horizon" movie is looking likely to be a box office dud. As far as Costner's concerned, though, he's already won. "Would I love that it would be highly, highly successful?" he posited to Entertainment Weekly. "Of course, I'd like that. My ego would like that; everyone would like that. But I am happiest that the movie that you and I are talking about looks the way I want it to look."