Alien
Event & Reissue 20th Century R 1h 57m Released May 25, 1979 Discussed 2024
Opening (limited)
$3.5M
91 theaters
Per-theater average
$38,710
opening weekend
Domestic total
$65.4M
Worldwide total
$188.0M
35% domestic
Production budget
$10.7M
17.6× worldwide
RT critics
93%
RT audience
94%
+1 vs critics
Metacritic
89
Platform release: the opening figure is its limited debut in 91 theaters, not a wide-release weekend.
Where it turns up
Friday, April 26, 2024 Fourth weekend of April 2024
On the chart Alien (1979 reissue): $1.6M
Expected 'A shot at getting close to $2 million': all presales Actual: $1.6M
In the note
Sometimes these faith based films run out of gas fast, but if it plays fairly normally, figure it ends up in the $5 million to $6 million range. Alien - 20th reissued this 1979 classic (where in 1979 I worked at the Egyptian Hollywood and we ran the film 24 hours a day for the first weekend, and I barely survived the 4am show crowd….) in about 1800 theaters and it’s not half bad.
Friday, August 16, 2024 Third weekend of August 2024
In the note
You look at the slate that came over with the purchase in 2019, and you can almost hear Rupert Murdoch looking at it saying ‘get me out of this business, let’s concentrate on our core business where we produce TV that sells catheters and doomsday meal kits’. Anyway, with a similar accuracy as the Intuit Dome entry system, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office. Alien: Romulus - I talked about two interesting things about this movie, the 2nd aspect is that this film was greenlit for Hulu; and after they saw what they had, it’s now a very successful theatrical release.
Friday, November 15, 2024 Third weekend of November 2024
In the note
The 4 quad family movie gets groups twice the size of the male skewing buddy action comedy, it’s kind of the opposite of what happened in August with Alien: Romulus. The Alien franchise was living in the Sci-Fi drama world for a couple of films (that kept decaying in gross, because that genre lives with older males), but by leaning into the Horror genre, the groups broadened in scope and we saw the gross pop back up.