With strong play in France and other new markets this weekend, Universal and Blumhouse’s Get Out has crossed the $200M mark at the worldwide box office. Jordan Peele’s directorial debut is at a scary good $204.3M total through Sunday, with more markets yet to release. The split is $173.8M domestic and $30.5M overseas. The good news comes on the heels of Universal setting a first-look deal with Peele and his Monkeypaw Productions.
The microbudget pic (est $4.5M before P&A) tells the story of Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) a young African American who goes to meet his white girlfriend’s (Allison Williams) family (Bradley Whitford, Catherine Keener) for the first time. But they’re not normal people, and Chris needs to Get Out of their house.
Peele, who also wrote the script, initially moved forward with the movie when he pitched it to QC Entertainment’s Sean McKittrick. McKittrick, Jason Blum, Edward H Hamm and Peele are producers.
The horror comedy has been a great success story. It scared up a huge $33.4M domestic opening in February and then dropped by just 15% in its sophomore session to score the best hold for the horror genre since Dracula 2000. It’s also the highest-grossing title ever for a feature debut from a writer/director with an original screenplay.
On March 11, it became the fastest Blumhouse title to cross $100M, hitting the target domestically in 16 days and beating Split (19 days), Paranormal Activity 3 (23 days) and Paranormal Activity (50 days). It’s been rolling out slowly internationally with the UK kicking things off on March 17. The market leads overseas play at $12.3M.
To get the word out offshore, Universal hosted social influencers screenings in individual territories and Peele was tireless in talking to press in select markets.
The current weekend added several key offshore hubs with $8.3M across the frame in 47 total. France, where there’s a fair amount of real-life suspense over today’s presidential election, was tops among new openers. Get Out is on track for a solid $2.3M weekend in the hexagon and is playing particularly well in Paris and the suburbs where it’s outperforming Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 in its 2nd session. It also has the best per-screen average in the market.
Elsewhere, Australia is off to a good start at No. 2 with $2.2M; Germany opened No. 2 behind GOTG2 and is on pace for $1.6M this weekend; and No. 3 openings are being seen in Belgium ($170K), Portugal ($65K), Switzerland ($235K), Panama ($307K) and Peru ($219K).
There are still 15 more territories to open including Russia and Argentina next weekend.
At the Sundance Film Festival where Get Out was the secret screening, Peele shared his inspirations for the film, which is clearly also resonating with overseas audiences. He said, “We had this black president and we’re living in this post-racial lie. This whole idea that we’ve passed it all. For me, and many black people out there, there’s racism. I experience it on an everyday basis. This movie was meant to reveal that there’s the monster of racism lurking underneath these seemingly innocent conversations and situations. It’s been fascinating watching the last few years develop, because now the movie is coming out in a very different America from where it began. I think it’s more important now, and far more interesting now. I respect Universal for having the f*cking balls leaning into this kind of sh*t.”
