Project Hail Mary Hits $164M as They Will Kill You Flops
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- Project Hail Mary earned $54.5M in its second weekend (-32% hold), with Saturday alone hitting $22.7M (+55%), pushing its 10-day domestic cume to $164.3M and making it Amazon MGM's highest-grossing post-merger film (surpassing Creed III's $156.2M).
- They Will Kill You opened to just $5M domestic and $9M global, well short of the $20M target, with no PLFs and weakest turnout in East, South and West regions; the $20M-budgeted Nocturna/New Line co-production marks the first major Skydance-Warner Bros. collaboration ahead of the Ellison-led merger.
- Searchlight's Ready or Not 2: Here I Come fell -56% to $4M in its second weekend (cume $16.2M), with the article questioning why two female-led horror films butting up against each other and Project Hail Mary both failed to expand audiences.
- Disney/Pixar's Hoppers held well in its fourth weekend with $12.2M (-31%), bringing its cume to $138.5M and passing Elemental's pace, while Sony's GOAT crossed $100M in week seven.
- They Will Kill You demographics: 42% Caucasian, 25% Black, 21% Latino, 7% Asian-American, with 25-34 the biggest cohort at 36%; RelishMix flagged spoiler rage and 'Ready or Not déjà vu' as the two loudest drags on social media sentiment.
- Project Hail Mary pulled 54% men and 36% women in weekend two, yet women under 25 gave 100% PostTrak exits despite only 8% turnout — a demo disconnect the article flags for studios to solve.
- The overall weekend came in around $98.7M, +27% from the same frame a year ago, with Blumhouse/New Line's Lee Cronin's The Mummy (April 17) next up in an already crowded horror calendar.
Why it matters: Project Hail Mary is on pace to cross $265M domestic, putting it in rare air for a non-franchise original and validating studios' bets on event movies this spring. Meanwhile, two of the season's most diverse, female-led genre releases collapsed despite positive exits and reviews, exposing a persistent gap in marketing reach and demo targeting for counterprogramming during event-film windows.
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