2024 will go down as a wild rollercoaster of a year at the box office. For those who don’t follow this stuff regularly, the first half of the year was impacted greatly by last year’s SAG and WGA strikes, which shut down Hollywood for months on end. That being the case, the calendar was light to kick off this year and, as a result, the box office suffered. No mainstream horror movies hitting it big for months, with only (all due respect) relatively minor hits like Late Night with the Devil and Tarot us warm.
Quite a few big movies majorly underperformed, leaving us on uncertain ground. Fortunately, the turnaround did come in the back half of the year and, by year’s end, the domestic box office will only be a few percentage points behind 2023. That’s a qualified win. All of this setup to make the point that horror had a big part to play in all of this. From the breakout hit that was Longlegs to the record-breaking Terrifier 3 and everything in between, it was another huge year for genre films.
Today, we’re going to look at the biggest of the big movies. Before getting into the list, we should note that we are counting worldwide grosses, for one. Secondly, for the purposes of this list, Venom: The Last Dance ($476 million worldwide) isn’t going to qualify as horror, even though some might argue it’s body horror of a sort. With that all out of the way, let’s dive in.
While it may not have been a resounding success relative to its budget, Sony kept trying to make bustin’ feel good this year with Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. The sequel 2021’s Afterlife took the action back to New York City, with members of the old cast uniting with the young cast to fight a new, big threat. The film pulled in a very respectable $202 million worldwide, which is almost exactly what Afterlife made, give or take a couple million. On the surface, that seems like a good thing. The problem? A $100 million budget.
Sony made Afterlife for a little more than $70 million, which allowed the film to be a hit. Increasing the budget to nine figures complicated matters. In any event, it’s still one of the highest-grossing genre films of 2024. Director Gil Kenan did the job he was asked to do and audiences showed up in similar numbers. The end result wasn’t nearly bad enough to kill the franchise, as a new Ghostbusters animated film is in the works, alongside a new animated series.
Overall, there’s still quite a bit of value in producing mainstream horror comedies that can appeal to a wide array of moviegoers. This franchise still has a loyal audience, to be certain, it just needs to be made at a certain price point to make it make sense in the future.
Few horror franchises birthed in the last handful of years have shown as much promise as that of A Quiet Place. The notion of a world ravaged by alien monsters with ultra-sensitive hearing has proved to be a surprisingly fertile ground for storytelling. This year, director Michael Sarnoski proved that with his compelling prequel aptly titled A Quiet Place: Day One. Thanks in no small part to the filmmaker’s knack for human storytelling, the film also proved that the audience for these films is pretty loyal.
Hitting theaters in the heart of what was a pretty disappointing summer movie season up to that point (from a box office POV anyway), Day One proved to be the first outright mainstream horror hit of 2024. The film pulled in $261 million worldwide against a reasonable $67 million budget. That’s certainly on the high end for horror but this is more blockbuster horror. That doesn’t always come cheap.
In any event, it proved to Paramount that they can continue to squeeze juice from this series in the right hands. To that end, the video game A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead also arrived this year, further expanding the scope of the franchise. We can only hope that whatever comes next, it contains performances as good as the ones delivered by Lupita Nyong’O and Joseph Quinn in this crowd-pleaser.
The Alien franchise had been dormant for seven years following the release of Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant in 2017. When Disney purchased Fox in 2019, that opened the door for a revival of this, among many other properties. That gave us the much-beloved Predator prequel Prey on Hulu in 2022, for example. When it came to bringing Xenomorphs back, the Mouse House tapped Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe) to put his stamp on the series – and they also let him bring that vision to the big screen. It worked out insanely well for all involved.
Romulus proved to be a sizable end-of-summer hit, taking in $350 million worldwide. That includes more than $245 million from overseas audiences. There’s still a huge appetite for these films, it seems. Giving the film an $80 million budget certainly didn’t hurt, as the pressure to over-deliver wasn’t there. Fortunately, Alvarez delivered the goods and, in the process, gave us the highest-grossing IMAX horror movie ever. That’s impressive.
As for what comes next? Predator: Badlands is getting a theatrical release, suggesting that Disney is very happy with the returns. No more direct-to-Hulu for these movies! Meanwhile, the possibility of a new Alien vs. Predator movie of some kind now looms large. The possibilities are endless thanks to this movie’s success.
Tim Burton was in need of a hit and boy did he get one with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. For a moment, it seemed like Burton’s golden days were behind him after lackluster performances from the likes of Dumbo and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. But when the legendary director finally decided to reunite with Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder for a sequel to Beetlejuice, it proved to be just what the doctor ordered.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice hit theaters in early September and resonated with audiences, allowing it to make its money all the way through the Halloween seasons. It was particularly popular in North America, with the sequel finishing its run with $451 million worldwide. It is, as of this writing, the tenth-biggest Hollywood release of 2024. Gladiator II might overtake it when all’s said and done but, either way, Warner Bros. and Burton got a much-needed win. Again, horror comedy for the masses can be good for business.
The real money, in the end, might be in all of the product tie-ins. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice had everything from branded Fanta to wild popcorn buckets. The success means it shouldn’t be remotely surprising if Burton is persuaded to come back for a third installment in the series sooner rather than later. Money talks, and this movie spoke rather loudly, as it were.
Even though it may not be “horror” in the more traditional sense, there’s no denying that giant monsters destroying cities would be downright horrific. So now is not the time to have that conversation. That having been said, director Adam Wingard’s exuberant, ridiculous and crowd-pleasing Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire stood tall above the competition this year. The King of the Monsters is still very much the king, with King Kong still an appropriate name, it seems.
Wingard previously helmed 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong, which helped lift theaters back up in the aftermath of the pandemic. Clearly, audiences liked his brand of kaiju madness as they showed up en masse to see a big, pink Godzill and Kong with a metal arm. The film pulled down just shy of $572 million worldwide. That’s A) the seventh biggest movie of 2024 overall and B) the biggest box office total for a MonsterVerse movie to date. 70 years later and Godzilla is showing no signs of slowing down.
This has ensured a bright future for the MonsterVerse. Not only are we getting a Godzilla x Kong sequel in 2027, but Apple is currently working on a second season of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. Long live the king.
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