Despite its reputation as a Hollywood player, Blumhouse's Black Christmas remake bombed big time at the box office, earning only $7 million worldwide. When this third take on Black Christmas was announced this past summer, some horror lovers were excited. After all, Blumhouse has a good track record with the genre, and Black Christmas is a name that carries weight within it. While subsequent reports of the film's intended feminist message did earn some derision, that's par for the course, and cinema has room for many diverse viewpoints.
What really started to make people worry about Black Christmas 2019's prospects were the trailers and clips from the film, which were packed full of plot spoilers, and made it abundantly clear that this was less a remake and more an original slasher idea that just happened to be called Black Christmas. While remakes don't necessarily need to slavishly stick to their source material, changing this much of the plot makes one wonder why it couldn't have just been called "Yuletide Fear," or something without built-in expectations.
Well, Black Christmas' opening weekend is now in the books, and the verdict is in: Blumhouse's latest is one of their rare financial failures. Blumhouse's forte is releasing relatively cheap films - usually under $10 million - and turning them into profit machines. In this case, Black Christmas reportedly cost $5 to make, and opened to a dismal $4.2 million domestic, and $7.2 million worldwide.
Why Black Christmas 2019 Bombed At The Box Office
One might be tempted to cut Black Christmas 2019 a little slack on its low box office, as it faced stiff competition form Sony's adventure sequel Jumanji: The Next Level, which ran away with #1 and will likely equal or surpass its predecessor worldwide. Even with that noted though, Black Christmas fell extremely short of even industry expectations for the film, which had it opening around $10 million. Clearly there are other forces at work here.
A likely major factor in Black Christmas bottoming out is its terrible reviews from critics, although bad reviews can be overcome if a movie is anticipated enough. In this case Black Christmas already carried with it an unsteady perception, which the reviews did nothing to help. Audiences also just plain disliked the film, with it receiving an alarming D- CinemaScore, and a 38% satisfaction rate on PostTrack, two services used to essentially do "exit polling" after film screenings. The audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is also even worse than the critics score. These factors combined to create a cloud of negativity around the film, which when combined with those out there already predisposed to dislike its feminist message, made Black Christmas the opposite of a hot ticket.