Brow Beat

It Heads for a $100 Million Weekend, Saving Hollywood’s Boat From the Storm Drain

“Want a box office record, Georgie?”

Warner Bros.

Variety is proclaiming the box office drought over, as director Andy Muschietti’s adaptation of Stephen King’s It floats toward a predicted domestic opening weekend of $103 million. If It meets projections, it will be the biggest opening weekend ever for a horror film, nearly doubling the $52.6 million record set by Paranormal Activity 3 in 2011. It’s the first bit of good news the movie industry has gotten after spending the whole summer watching their paper boat sail into a storm drain: Summer box office was down 14.6 percent from 2016, the worst haul since 2006. But just in the nick of time, It appeared with a friendly smile, asking if Hollywood wanted its boat back, and maybe a balloon or two to go along with it.

It took a lot of convincing before Georgie Denbrough reached into the sewer to get his boat back, but film executives went shoulder-deep before It even opened. New Line Cinema has already begun work on the second half, rehiring screenwriter Gary Dauberman to work out the modern-day portion of King’s novel, which Muschietti is expected to direct.

Second place for the weekend will go to Home Again, a Reese Witherspoon romantic comedy from writer-director Hallie Meyers-Shyer. Home Again should bring in $8.6 million despite not being about a sewer-clown—the worst kind of clown!—murdering children. In Hollywood bean-counter terms, that represents a $94.4 million “child-murdering sewer-clown differential,” which should bring us some amazing movies once it makes it into greenlight projections. But don’t worry too much about the lavish remake of Killer Klowns From Outer Space this weekend will inevitably inspire: Down here, every movie floats.