Following a trend of popular folk horror movies, Gretel & Hansel was slated to earn well at the box office, but its opening weekend proved otherwise.
In 2015, Robert Eggers’ The Witch took box offices by storm, pulling in over $8 million on its opening weekend. Hereditary, also produced by A24, followed suit in 2018. It shot well past the projected $5-9 million, making over $13 million in its opening weekend, ultimately becoming the independent movie company’s number one highest grossing title. In its trailers, Gretel & Hansel’s dark twist on a beloved fairy tale evoked elements of these recent folk horror hits, leading to high expectations on box office turnout.
Although the movie received moderate-to-good reception from critics, it was panned by audiences. As a result, its box office numbers suffered, nowhere near the predicted success. Its opening weekend, it made around $5.7 million, barely breaking even from its approximate budget of $5 million. It is still in theatres, but prospects aren’t looking good. World-wide, the storybook horror has only made around $9.2 million.
Gretel & Hansel Suffered From Premiering During A Dump Month
In the movie business, dump months are times of the year when studios offload the movies they are contractually obligated to release but have lower critical or commercial value. Between the uncertainty caused by winter weather, the burnout of awards season, and the ratings loss caused by the Superbowl, January and February fall categorically into one of the “dump month” periods. With a release date on January 31st, Gretel & Hansel started off at a disadvantage. However, the first two months of the year aren’t an automatic death sentence. Taken, released the 30th of January 2009, made $24 million its opening weekend, so popular it ended up launching a multi-movie franchise. The start of the year has been used by some studios as a second Halloween to set the tone for horror movies to come later in the year after witnessing the success of 2005 February release White Noise, which grossed over $91 million worldwide.
Gretel & Hansel’s Box Office Predictions Didn’t Account For The Movie Being Disappointing
Word-of-mouth is an important marketing tool for movies during their theater run. This is especially true for movies in more niche genres like horror. Unlike the big budget big studio movies that can rely on name recognition or family appeal, horror movies often lean on their audiences to spread the word. The Blair Witch Project capitalized on this in 1999. Between a unique marketing campaign and word-of-mouth promotion, The Blair Witch Project went from a small-scale indie horror movie that made $1.5 million its opening weekend to a global phenomenon that essentially invented the found footage horror genre.
Gretel & Hansel was overall a bland movie. It had some interesting ideas and beautiful cinematography, but it failed to deliver on the horror. Audiences, and many critics, marked it a movie with plenty of style but little substance. Moviegoers hyped from the trailer left theatres disappointed. This can be observed in its opening weekend box office numbers. The movie made a little under $2.5 million Friday, a little over $2.5 million Saturday, and around $1 million Sunday. The initial numbers aren’t high but, with low audience approval, they also can’t be bolstered by person-to-person recommendations. With an ambiguous ending, the movie ambitiously opened the door to a sequel, although it’s unclear if it had the appeal to warrant one. All in all, Gretel & Hansel has not performed terribly, especially considering how low its actual budget was, but it was nowhere near the hit many expected it to be.
