The $ of the Beast: Indie Film ‘Late Night with the Devil’ Opens with a Scary Good $666,666 on Its First Sunday
IFC’s latest theatrical feature had a devilishly good weekend.
Late Night with the Devil, a found footage style horror film starring David Dastmalchian as a late night talk show host who books a possessed girl as a guest to drum up ratings, took home $666,666 in Sunday box office receipts.
While Sunday’s seemingly-significant box office amount makes for a better headline, the total take was $2.8 million, making the film IFC’s most successful ever on its first weekend. Prior to that, IFC’s best numbers came from Watcher, with $819,000 and Skinamarink with $801,000. Appearing in 1,043 theaters, Late Night was the film’s widest opening since 2015’s The D Train.
“This weekend’s release of Late Night With the Devil set fire to our old opening record,” Scott Shooman, head of AMC Networks Films, which owns IFC, told Variety. “[It] continues to showcase that there is still potential for highly reviewed, intelligent auteur films in movie theaters across all genres.”
Though Late Night is theatrical only right now, it will be stream on Shudder beginning April 19th.
In other box office news, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire opened with $45.2 million in North America, ahead of Ghostbusters: Afterlife by a $44 million, although that film opened just as the pandemic was ending. Sydney Sweeney’s religious horror film Immaculate opened in fourth place with a mere $5.3 million domestically.
Dune: Part Two remained in the No. 2 spot with $17.6 million, Kung Fu Panda 4 dropped to third place with $4.4 million, and Mark Wahlberg’s doggie drama Arthur the King rounded out the top five with $4.4 million.