SUNDAY AM WRITETHRU With a current -68% second drop or $28.2M, Captain America: Brave New World is not collapsing as much as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (-70%) or The Marvels (-78%), even with a B-CineScore and a post-holiday weekend.

Still, we will take that delay for a film that does not have a lot of admirers. Brave New World was never supposed to float like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. or Deadpool & Wolverine (-54%) because of its drab exits. 3 (-48%). With a global running total of $289.4M, the film’s break-even point on its $180M production cost is approximately $425M.

The weekend’s biggest story was Neon’s The Monkey, which had a C+ CinemaScore (the same as Oz Perkins’ Longlegs) and a 2 1/2 star PostTrak. It opened with $14.2M, the second-highest opening for the distribution, behind Perkins’ Longlegs ($22.4M) from last July. Additionally, as we previously stated, there are a ton of horror movies this year, i.e. Two months into 2025, The Monkey has the best genre debut to date, with Heart Eyes, Companion, etc.

All of this occurs at a moment when Neon’s Anora is raging toward a possible Best Picture Oscar after winning big at yesterday’s Indie Spirits, along with DGA and PGA. The elegant stripper with a golden heart, created and directed by Sean Baker, is poised to entice SAG today.With $15.5 million as of Oscar week, Anora is Baker’s highest-grossing domestic film to date.

“The Monkey has made an incredible premiere. Horror movie greats Osgood Perkins, James Wan, and Stephen King devised a startling thrill ride that has twisted the genre and given viewers all around the nation a wild good time. We were able to develop a campaign that capitalized on the enjoyment of the movie and the crowd-pleasing experience that viewers would have in the theater thanks to our second partnership with Osgood.We are excited for The Monkey to be in theaters for weeks to come since it is a unique film from a unique filmmaker,” said Elissa Federoff, Chief Distribution Officer of Neon.

The Monkey’s 49% definite recommend rating with PostTrak audiences—which is consistently a better measure of word-of-mouth than PostTrak’s total positive/star score—fueled its ascent to the upper end of its weekend range.

The lesson from this weekend’s The Monkey, to paraphrase Louis Prima’s ape song: Neon and A24 want to be like you, move like you, and talk like you when it comes to opening horror films. Other majors are attempting to follow that low P&A, digitally driven approach (in this case, about $10M on The Monkey), believing that everything that comes up is profitable.

Neon spent less than $300K on linear TV across sports content (SportsCenter, X Games, NBA, Men’s College Basketball), according to iSpot, proving that the drive for Monkey was digital. With over 64 million views for the image over the past ninety days, Tubular Labs displays a respectable amount of views marketing it on NEON’s YouTube. As previously reported by Deadline, with 100 million views worldwide in its first 72 hours, Monkey holds the record for the most views of any independent horror movie trailer.

One company even went so far as to demonstrate to me that, on opening day, their horror films’ cheap marketing budgets produced the same tracking results (in awareness/interest) as Longlegs’ scores—but their productions failed. Why? That studio’s response was that the product was completely rejected by the market.

Another example is New Line’s highly acclaimed and well-reviewed film Companion, which debuted at $9.3M and is currently trading at a 2.1 multiple to $20M domestically (the Zach Cregger-produced film had an 18-day theatrical run before going digital). Warners spent relatively little on domestic P&A for the movie after firing their marketing mastermind Josh Goldstine; we were told that the global budget was $29 million. Why, therefore, was Warners unable to seize an opportunity like The Monkey?

What is happening is that Neon, A24, and even Cineverse, with Terrifier 3, are adept at igniting interest and engaging a genre audience. They know how to keep costs down while generating enthusiasm on the ground and using guerilla tactics. Other studios are unable to even open a can of smelling salts and face reality when it comes to horror P&A against box office profits. The failure of the studio that spent the same as Neon and had music akin to Longlegs can be attributed to a poor marketing strategy: it was unable to persuade the public to attend.

There are some in town who believe that a film with a B+ CinemaScore, a 94% Rotten Tomatoes score, and four stars on PostTrak was a huge waste of a chance. Despite having lower scores, Heart Eyes from Screen Gems/Spyglass is currently earning $26.7M domestically, more than the Companion. It should not be. Although it makes financial sense to spend little on a low-budget film (Companion, about $10M), some competitors believe that more should have been spent on the film if the studio had adopted a more conventional strategy. Either that, or resurrect your street teams and guerilla activities and make waves on TikTok if you wish to follow in Neon and A24’s footsteps. Warners already created magic with their Barbie.

James Wan’s Atomic Monster produced The Monkey, which featured EPs by Fred Berger, Tom Quinn, and Peter Safran. Chris Ferguson and Brian Kavanaugh-Jones also produced.58% of the audience was male, 30% were between the ages of 18 and 24, 35% were between the ages of 25 and 34 (the largest demographic), and 30% were beyond the age of 35. The largest quad was the 25–34 age group, which made up 35% of the crowd.43% of attendees were Caucasian, 29% were Latino and Hispanic, 17% were Black, 7% were Asian, and 5% were NatAm/Other.Twelve percent of weekend sales came from the Monkey’s hold on PLF screens. With $54K through Saturday night, AMC Burbank is the top multiplex in the United States, and South Central is the best market for a horror movie. In the lobby, moviegoers were interacting with the 8-foot monkey.

According to RelishMix, “in a sea of Neon Anora materials, in that race for Oscar,” The Monkey’s online reach is 16% higher than the norms for the horror genre, with a social media universe of 154.5M on TikTok, YouTube, X, Facebook, and Instagram before to its premiere.