A Quiet Place Part II has not only critics and audiences loudly cheering, but Hollywood too.

The John Krasinski-directed sequel pulled in $48.4 million over the weekend so far, which sets a record as the highest of any film release since the beginning of the pandemic shutdown. The take was just shy of the $50 million the original A Quiet Place tallied in its 2018 opening weekend. The Paramount release, currently playing in 3,726 venues, is expected to generate a sizable $58 million through Memorial Day.

A Quiet Place Part II sees the return of Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe as a family forced to live in near-silence after an alien invasion. Place‘s bigger box office may be a benefit of getting an exclusive theatrical release, at least for the first month and a half before it moves to Paramount Plus in 45 days.

The good news is that the tally is roughly what the studio would have expected had the movie been released as planned in March of 2020. The studio’s decision to sit on the sequel until theaters reopened to a significant degree proved to be a good strategy especially since the film cost $61 million to produce. (The first carried a $61 million price tag.)

The sequel has been well-received by critics, and touted as a must-see in theaters, with reviewers highlighting how the sound editing made the thriller that much more suspenseful.

Heading into the holiday weekend, more than 70% of theaters were open to viewers whose returning confidence in rising vaccination rates declining coronavirus cases and the availability new studio content meant a sharp increase in potential viewers.

Also new in theaters was Disney’s Cruella, which raked in $16.1M in 29 markets, or about 60% of the available global market, good for a world-wide opening of $37.4M. The film also premiered on Disney+ (for an additional fee) in markets where the service is available. Add in the totals from Monday and the film is expected to garner around $42.6 million for the four-day Memorial Day weekend.

The type of films released this weekend may have made a difference, too. After a run of new major-release movies that were geared toward male moviegoers like Godzilla vs. Kong, video game adaptation Mortal Kombat and the actioner Wrath of Man, to name a few), audiences for both Quiet Place 2 and Cruella leaned female, 53% of ticket buyers for the former and 64% went to ticket-goers identifying as female. 

According to box-office analysts, this could be the first weekend the domestic box office could top $100 million since the pandemic began. The last time the box office reached that figure over a weekend was the first weekend in March 2020.