‘Evil Dead’ Scares Up Solid Numbers, Tops Box Office

The box office tallies for the weekend are in. While many expected G.I. Joe to hold firm in the top position, it was a genre piece that defied odds, bumping the big budget action flick from prominence. Did I mention is wasn’t just a genre piece to take the number one slot, but a remake at that? That’s right Fede Alvarez’s reboot of Sam Raimi’s beloved 1981 classic, Evil Dead chopped through the competition over the weekend.

Evil Dead (review), which was reportedly shot on a $17 million budget, pulled down $26 million domestically, to clear the top slot by a clean $5 million. Not bad for a film that was once being eyed as a limited release production.

Alvarez’s thrilling rendition pretty much disregards the comedy that Raimi’s original infused, instead leaning on a very dark mood. The film moves at a terrific pace, offers outstanding loads of gore and, in the end, proves to be a completely unforgiving picture. In short, it’s the horror film we’ve all hoped for.

Thankfully, the American audience had the faith to give this one a chance. Leading up to the film’s release word of mouth took off. Everyone and their mother had something to say about Evil Dead, and while not every word uttered was positive, the majority clearly were.

To give you an idea of how well Evil Dead scored this weekend, let’s take a look at this weekend last year. In 2012, over the weekend of April 6-8, not a single horror film made its debut. The highly anticipated Hunger Games held on to the top spot with $33 million after two weeks release. Those are impressive numbers, but I think we’d all agree that The Hunger Games entered the field with astronomical buzz behind it.

What about the horror releases in theaters that weekend? Well, there weren’t many. In fact, of the top 20 films on the charts, only one could be classified a genre piece: The Raid: Redemption. The Raid sat in the 14^th position, drawing roughly a half million dollars.

To put things into greater perspective, the original Evil Dead earned just over $2 million total on the big screen. The follow up, Evil Dead 2 took away just $6 million total. Sure there are some financial adjustments that need be factored in due to time, but there’re no two ways about it: Fede Alvarez’s spin is a commercial smash compared to past franchise offerings.

There’s no telling what kind of figures next week will turn up. That said, I haven’t heard a single negative thing about the film, so another impressive showing won’t surprise me in the least. Evil Dead is looking like an early box office standout for our often disregarded genre.