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Congrats to Jordan Peele side all the creators involved in NOPE

Box Office: Jordan Peele’s ‘Nope’ Opens to No. 1 With $44 Million

By Rebecca Rubin

Audiences responded with a resounding “yep” to Jordan Peele’s science-fiction thriller “Nope,” which topped the box office with its $44 million debut.

Those ticket sales were slightly behind projections of $50 million and fall in between the results of Peele’s first two films, 2017’s “Get Out” (which opened to $33 million) and 2019’s “Us” (which opened to $71 million). “Nope” may not have cemented a new box office record for Peele, but it demonstrates the director’s popularity at the movies and marks a strong start for an original, R-rated horror film.

In fact, “Nope” stands as the highest opening weekend tally for an original film since “Us” debuted more than three years ago. Yes, that includes Quentin Tarantino’s star-studded “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” which started with $41 million in July 2019.

“The opening isn’t as big as ‘Us,’ but it’s still extremely impressive,” says David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research. “The weekend figure is far above average for the genre.”

It’s worth noting that Peele’s sophomore feature “Us,” a scary story about menacing doppelgängers, enjoyed an especially huge opening weekend because it followed the runaway success of the Oscar-winning “Get Out.” After his directorial debut captured the zeitgeist by delivering scares while encouraging audiences to think, fans of the filmmaker were more than a little eager to watch Peele’s next mind-bending nightmare. Though Peele still has outsized goodwill with audiences, box office expectations for “Nope,” another anxiety-inducing social thriller, should have been comparatively a little more Earth-bound.

“Nope” cost $68 million, which is significantly more than “Get Out” (with its slender $4.5 million budget) and “Us” (with its $20 million budget). So the movie will require a little more coinage than Peele’s past films to turn a profit. Word-of-mouth will be key. “Get Out” and “Us” were wildly successful in theaters, with each collecting $255 million at the global box office. “Nope” does not open at the international box office until mid-August.

“Nope” reunites Peele with “Get Out” star Daniel Kaluuya — and adds Keke Palmer and Steven Yeun to the mix — in the story of siblings who live on a gulch in California and attempt to uncover video evidence of a UFO. Critics were fond of “Nope,” which holds an 82% on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences gave the film a “B” grade, the same CinemaScore as “Us.”

Universal’s president of domestic distribution Jim Orr points out that “Nope” is appealing to all demographics; according to exit polls, 35% of ticket buyers were Caucasian, 20% were Hispanic, 33% were African American and 8% were Asian. He says that’s a good sign in terms of its theatrical run.

“We’re thrilled with the results this weekend,” Orr says. “Jordan Peele is an incredible talent. His films are layered and thought-provoking and ridiculously entertaining.”

Since “Nope” was the only new movie to open this weekend, several holdover titles rounded out North American box office charts.
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ARTICLE LINK

https://variety.com/2022/film/box-office/nope-box-office-opening-weekend-jordan-peele-1235324105/

Post Script NOTE: the purple outfit in the article linked above