It was an unconventional strategy. Focus Features made the bold choice to release Robert Eggers’ period horror movie Nosferatu on Christmas Day, offering up a fresh take on a gothic horror classic as a bit of counterprogramming against traditional holiday fare. And it was a gamble that paid off, with Nosferatu sinking its fangs into an impressive opening weekend.
Here in the United States, Nosferatu scared up $40.3 million in its 5-day holiday weekend debut, which Variety notes is “the biggest Christmas Day launch and weekend haul for a genre film, overtaking the benchmark set in 1998 by Robert Rodriguez’s high school sci-fi story The Faculty with $4.4 million on opening day and $11.6 million over the traditional weekend.”
“Heading into the extended Yuletide frame, Nosferatu was projected to open to $25 million from 2,992 North American theaters,” Variety further details. “Focus Features reported that 40% of opening weekend crowds purchased their tickets the day before they saw the movie.”
Nosferatu took a bite out of $11.5 million on Christmas Day alone, with the film’s traditional 3-day opening weekend frame pulling in $21.1 million. That gives it the highest opening weekend of Robert Eggers’ career thus far, surpassing The Witch, The Lighthouse, and The Northman.
The production budget for Nosferatu was a reported $50 million, so it’ll need to keep making money in the coming weeks in order to turn a profit for Focus Features. But the film is off to one hell of a good start as the calendar flips over to 2025, the box office success no doubt driven by rave reviews that have thus far given the film a 86% Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes.
One of those rave reviews came courtesy of Bloody Disgusting’s head critic Meagan Navarro, who declared Nosferatu to be the very best horror movie released this entire year.
Meagan writes, “There’s not a single facet of Nosferatu that doesn’t impress for the sheer artistry on display. Bill Skarsgård’s unrecognizable transformation as Count Orlok startles, but it’s Lily-Rose Depp’s mesmeric performance as Ellen, the outcast trapped on society’s margins and forced to become both victim and hero, that stuns.”
“Productions on this scale are rare in horror,” Meagan’s 5-star review continues, “and Nosferatu is operatic and dramatic, bold and revolting, with a powerful final shot for the ages.”
Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu is of course a remake of the 1922 classic directed by F.W. Murnau, which itself was an unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker’s legendary horror novel Dracula.
[Related] The 100 Year History and Legacy of ‘Nosferatu’
Stay tuned for more box office reporting on Nosferatu as the numbers roll in.
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