The ever-increasing number of COVID-positive people all around the globe has put the entire world at a standstill for more than two years. Even after things started recovering last year, subsequent and deadlier variants of the COVID-19 continued to threaten multiple industries, including theaters. Many even thought that Paramount Pictures’ decision to cancel Scream’s red carpet premiere was a sign of worse things to come. It also didn’t help ease concerns when The 355, one of the first films to be released this 2022, posted less than $5 million at the domestic box office. With that said, the future of the Scream franchise is all but secured at this point after the fifth Scream film debuted at the top of the global and domestic box office after launching last January 14, 2022. According to Deadline, Scream pulled in a combined total of nearly $49 million at the international box office. This is higher than every other Scream film before it and at least more than half of what Halloween Kills earned, another recent horror film that is a sequel/reboot of an older iconic supernatural franchise. The film’s performance in the United States ($31.5 million) is similar to 1997’s Scream 2 ($32.9 million) and 2000’s Scream 3 ($34.7 million). The legacy of Wes Craven and the Scream franchise is secure. However, after more than a decade of not seeing a new installment, fans weren’t quite sure what to make of the fifth Scream film. The mixed reviews of Scream 4 also placed a heavy burden on Scream to do better. Thankfully, this is exactly what it did. The new Scream movie combined nostalgia and fresh faces to deliver a horrifying experience that appears to appeal to audiences of all ages. What is perhaps the most interesting part about Scream is how much critics and audiences alike are loving it. On the reviews aggregate website, Rotten Tomatoes, critics gave Scream a 76% score while it received an 84% audience score. These are the highest ratings for a Scream film since the first two movies in the series. Of course, the bigger news here is that Scream officially unseated Spider-Man: No Way Home. Tom Holland’s latest MCU outing had sat comfortably at the top of the charts since December 17 with no movie coming close to taking its spot. Although No Way Home’s numbers were expected to drop in what would be in its nth weekend in theaters, it’s still amazing to see another film do better, especially one with a relatively small production budget ($24 million vs $200 million). Speaking of No Way Home, Sony and Disney’s extremely profitable movie venture just breached the $1.6 billion mark. In a few weeks, we might be looking at the 6th highest-grossing film of all time if it can make $1.7 billion to swing past 2019’s The Lion King and 2015’s Jurassic World.
