Tracy Oliver on ‘The Blackening’ Box Office and Why Making Microbudget Movies is ‘Empowering’

variety.com:

Angelique Jackson SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers from “The Blackening,” now streaming on Starz and available on VOD.

Tracy Oliver is best-known as the co-writer of “Girls Trip” and the creator of “Harlem” and “First Wives Club,” but she’s also quite proficient with numbers.

And in terms of the success of her latest film, “The Blackening,” the numbers tell an important tale. “I don’t think people understand the math of it all,” Oliver says, settling into a plush beige armchair in the lobby of the 1 Hotel South Beach in Miami Beach on a sweltering day in June. “Even my family thought I made more on “Girls Trip” than I actually did.” Despite the 2017 comedy becoming a massive box office hit — earning more than $140 million worldwide — Oliver didn’t have any backend on the film. “It was considered such a risk when we made it that they weren’t going to spend a lot of money on the writing,” she explains. “But I was just so happy to be there that I was like, ‘Oh my god, let’s do it!’” Thus, with “The Blackening” being a microbudget production, she made more than “Girls Trip” paid on the horror-comedy’s opening day in theaters. “It’s that crazy?” she says of the financial windfall.

Oliver sat down with Variety at the tail end of a whirlwind media tour promoting “The Blackening’s” Juneteenth weekend debut.