Blackening brought laughs to theaters and generated around $6 million in box office ticket sales the weekend of June 19.
The film played in 1,775 locations for a per-theatre average of $3,380, according to tracking company Comscore. Still, the horror-comedy only managed a sixth-place finish.
He came far behind this weekend’s champion, the flashwhich grossed $55.1 million. Elementary debuted at #2 with $29.5 million. Among the remains, Spider-Man: Through the Spider-Verse was third with $27.8 million. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts was fourth with $20 million, and The little Mermaid rounded out the top five with $11.6 million.
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While Blackening opened far behind the competition, the film recouped its reported production budget of $5 million in three days. The Lionsgate release is expected to gross $7.0 million by the end of Monday’s holiday.
The story follows a group of black friends who reunite for a Juneteenth getaway. But their vacation weekend turns into a nightmare when they find themselves trapped in a cabin with a killer who forces them to play a trivia game called “The Blackening.”
The cast includes Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah and Yvonne Orji.
The film is directed by Tim Story (think like a man), and co-written by Tracy Oliver (Girls trip) and Dewayne Perkins (Brooklyn nine-nine).
The comedy received a “B+” CinemaScore public. Meanwhile, critics gave it a “fresh” score of 86% on rotten tomatoes.
Blackening premiere in September at the Toronto International Film Festival. After a bidding war, Lionsgate acquired the film from MRC for around $20 million, Deadline reported.
The film is based on a 2018 short of the same name by comedy troupe 3Peat. The story confuses horror movie tropes – and the idea that black characters are often cut first – by asking the question: if the entire cast of a horror movie is black, then who dies first? ?
Shawn Edwards, film critic for Fox 4 News in Kansas City, Missouri and executive producer of Critics Choice Association’s “Celebration of Black Cinema & TV,” said Urban Hollywood 411 the film was never expected to draw huge crowds, adding that it went “as planned”.
“Let’s be honest, this is a movie for us by us,” Edwards said Sunday. “It will get a lot more attention once it hits the domestic market.”
Personally, I found Blackening sometimes funny, but boring.
Between the constant use of the N-word and the plot twist involving the killer at the end (which didn’t exactly add up), I was happy when the credits finally rolled.
