Box Office: ‘The Monkey’ Drums Up $5.8 Million Opening Day, ‘Captain America’ Gets Second Term on Top

variety.com:

J. Kim Murphy Neon’s horror comedy “The Monkey” is seeing and doing a strong opening weekend, though it’ll take silver at the box office behind Disney’s “Captain America: Brave New World,” still on top of the charts but facing a substantial tumble in its second weekend. “The Monkey” chopped into an estimated $5.8 million from 3,200 theaters across Friday and preview screenings.

That puts it on track for Neon’s second-biggest opening weekend ever, only falling behind director Osgood Perkins‘ prior horror film at the banner, last summer’s breakout “Longlegs.” Reviews have been positive for this follow-up, though audiences are mixed with ticketbuyer survey firm Cinema Score logging a “C+.” Horror films skew lower in those polls though; beyond that, “Longlegs” notched the same middling grade before legging out a healthy 3.31x multiplier on its opening weekend.

Even only taking into account this opening weekend, “The Monkey” is in a great position. At a production budget of around $10 million, the film is primed to turn a substantial profit in theaters.

Perkins and Neon’s next film, “Keeper,” is already slated to hit theaters in October. “The Monkey” is a more comical turn for Perkins, adapting a Stephen King story about two brothers (Theo James) who see everyone around them begin to die at the hands of a devilish toy primate.