It looks like audiences don’t want to play Jigsaw’s games anymore, as the Saw re-release was a massive bomb at the box office this weekend.
According to Box Office Mojo, the Saw 10th Anniversary re-release was the third worst performing wide release of all time, grossing only $650,000 this weekend. That puts it just behind Delgo and Oogieloves In the Big Balloon Adventure.
To put that in perspective, the movie took home a per screen average of $315. Depending on ticket prices, that means in the average theater, only 20-25 people saw the movie throughout the entire weekend.
That is a massive failure for the franchise, especially considering the re-release was intended in part to get people excited for another potential Saw movie, as we previously reported. But these numbers are grim enough that it could very well be the death nail for the franchise, and we’ll have to see if the producers are still planning to go through with the new film.
Of course, we can’t judge a re-release with the same criteria as a new release, but even by re-release standards this was pretty bad. Back in August the Ghostbusters 30th anniversary re-release was able to earn $1.7 million, and that was only released on 784 screens as opposed to Saw’s 2,000 screens.
So what happened? There’s a couple of reasons the movie might have performed so poorly. For one, it opened on Halloween night itself, and Halloween was on a Friday this year. Audiences tend to flock to horror movies leading up to Halloween, but less so on Halloween night itself. According to Box Office Mojo, the last time Halloween fell on a Friday the major horror release at the time, Saw V, dropped 78%. And the Saw re-release was in theaters all weekend, but on Saturday and Sunday, the excitement of Halloween had pretty much died down.
It’s possible the movie would have performed better if it had opened the week before Halloween, whereas audiences didn't want to see the movie on Halloween night itself, and then after Halloween was over, there was no longer as much excitement to flock to a horror film.
There’s also the very real possibility that audiences are just sick of Saw. The last two movies in the franchise, Saw VI and Saw 3D, were also the worst performing movies of the franchise, with Saw 3D making $45 million domestically compared to Saw II’s $87 million.
The question, then, is would an eighth Saw movie be able to bring audiences back to the theater and get them excited again? Or have we as an audience just moved on from movies like Saw?
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