2026’s Horror Movie Box Office Curse Officially Broken By Lee Cronin’s The Mummy In Week 2

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Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is bringing its curse-breaking skills to bear.

The new Mummy film from Blumhouse premiered on April 17th and is the third in a series of reboots of classic Universal Monsters. (Interestingly, it’s the first of these films not directly made by Universal, but by Warner Bros. Pictures.) This follows 2020’s successful The Invisible Man, written and directed by Leigh Whannell, which earned $144.5 million on a $7 million budget. However, the upcoming Wolf Man (also written or co-written and directed by Whannell, scheduled for 2025) underperformed, bringing in only $35.2 million against a $25 million budget.

Despite costing $22 million to make and opening with a modest $13.5 million – only slightly more than the original Wolf Man film – Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is performing better than expected. Deadline reports the movie is predicted to earn $5.5 million this weekend, a drop of just 59% from its opening. This is a positive sign for a horror film, as movies in this genre usually see much larger drops in attendance after their first weekend – often 60% or more – suggesting audiences are continuing to enjoy The Mummy.

The new Mummy movie didn’t just do well – it actually reversed a recent trend in the horror genre. While it beat the second-week drop of Wolf Man (which was significant at over 70%) and even outperformed The Invisible Man, 2026 has generally been a tough year for horror sequels. Despite some big horror successes like Scream 7 (currently the sixth highest-grossing film of the year), most horror movies have seen particularly large drops in ticket sales after their opening weekend.

Six horror movies scheduled for release in 2026 are already showing signs of significant audience drop-off after their opening weekends, placing them among the 200 biggest second-week declines in box office history. These films are We Bury the Dead (down 85.7%), Faces of Death (down 82%), Psycho Killer (down 80.6%), Scream 7 (down 73.3%), 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (down 72.6%), and The Bride! (down 70.4%).

Although not all horror movies coming out in 2026 have shown this pattern, several others have experienced significant declines in viewership, like Return to Silent Hill (down 69.8%) and A24’s Undertone (down 66.8%).

Whether this success signals a positive trend for horror movies in 2026 is still uncertain. Despite largely negative reviews – currently at 46% on Rotten Tomatoes – Lee Cronin’s The Mummy has managed a strong second weekend at the box office. This suggests that upcoming horror films with more positive buzz or better reviews could perform even better.

Several other new movies are also expected to perform well in their second weekends in theaters. These include the latest installment in the Scary Movie series, Evil Dead Burn, produced by Sam Raimi, the sequel Insidious: Out of the Further from Blumhouse, Zach Cregger’s take on Resident Evil, and the highly-anticipated original horror films Hokum (with a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes) and Obsession (96%).

Look, whether or not Lee Cronin’s The Mummy starts a whole new wave of monster movies remains to be seen, but one thing’s for sure: it’s performing much better than The Wolf Man did. I’m hearing it’s about to cross the $50 million mark globally this weekend, which puts it incredibly close to breaking even – they estimated that point at $55 million. If things continue at this pace, we’re looking at a genuinely profitable film by the time it finishes its run, and that’s good news for everyone involved.

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2026-04-25 21:02