Warner Bros. Tops Weekend Box Office Again as Horror Dominates

Warner Bros. struck box office gold again with “The Conjuring: Last Rites.” (Giles Keyte / Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.)

American moviegoers are hungry for horror thrillers, judging by this weekend’s box office receipts.

Two of the weekend’s top-grossing movies were also distributed by Warner Bros., adding to a string of hits for the studio this year. The Conjuring: Last Rites brought in $83 million in domestic box office sales in its first weekend, while Weapons continued into another weekend with $5.4 million in domestic sales. Both are R-rated horror movies.

The showing follows a somewhat subdued summer moviegoing season. Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian noted that the summer movie season that wrapped on Labor Day Monday fell a bit short of expectations in terms of overall revenue, totaling $3.673 billion, compared with $3.677 billion last summer.

That’s after a record-breaking Memorial Day weekend set high hopes that Hollywood could reach $4 billion in domestic sales for the season. But it fell short.

Still, the horror genre has generated buzz. Comscore data show horror films generated $965,575,462 heading into the weekend, and with the $83 million from The Conjuring: Last Rites, raised the total to $1,048,575,462 for the 2025 domestic box office, Dergarabedian said.

“With this weekend’s huge overperformance by The Conjuring: Last Rites, the momentum is back for movie theaters, and that’s great news,” Dergarabedian said.

Last Rites, the latest chapter in the Conjuring cinematic universe, reunites Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson as renowned real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. The film grossed a per-theater average of $21,831 in the U.S. and Canada and raked in another $104 million internationally for an estimated $187 million worldwide opening, according to Comscore.

That total includes $14.3 million on IMAX screens, making it the biggest-ever domestic IMAX opening for a horror movie.

Dergarabedian said that despite falling short on summer expectations, Hollywood studios delivered an eclectic set of films, including Lilo & Stitch, Superman, Jurassic World Rebirth, How to Train Your Dragon, Fantastic Four: First Steps, Mission: Impossible, and F1: The Movie.

Walt Disney’s filmed version of the original Broadway hit musical Hamilton won second place at the domestic weekend box office with an estimated $10 million opening.

Weapons has sold a cumulative domestic total of $143 million through Sunday since its Aug. 8 opening. It has sold $251.5 million globally.

Disney’s PG-rated family comedy Freakier Friday, a sequel to the 2003 hit that reunites Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan, came in fourth place with $3.8 million through Sunday. It has grossed $87.8 million domestically and $142.9 million worldwide since opening domestically on Aug. 8.

Sony Pictures’ crime thriller Caught Stealing took fifth place, selling $3.2 million in tickets in its second weekend, for a cumulative of $14.9 million and another $9.4 million internationally.

The two superhero movies in the domestic top 10, Disney’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and Warner Bros.’ Superman, have grossed $270.1 million and $353.3 million year to date, respectively.

The $124 million in tickets sold over the weekend through Sunday brings the domestic year to date total to $6.14 billion, or 3.9% higher than this time in 2024, Dergarabedian said.

Write to Janet H. Cho at janet.cho@dowjones.com