Movies
‘The Woman In Black’ Scares Up Record-Breaking Numbers In The UK
THR writes that Daniel Radcliffe’s first post-Harry Potter role in British horror flick The Woman In Black has helped scare up record breaking figures for a British fright flick.
The Hammer-produced film, directed by James Watkins and adapted by Jane Goldman from the classic novel by Susan Hill, has spent three weeks at number one in the U.K. boxoffice ringing up a total of £14.6 million ($23.2 million) from 457 screens.
The makers claim those figures make it the U.K.’s highest grossing British horror film since records began 20 years ago.
The movie has now scared up more box office lucre than Hollywood -backed productions shot in the U.K. with British talent including The Others (£11.9 million, $18.9 million), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (£11.5 million, $18.2 million) and Interview with a Vampire (£10.7 million, $17 million), as well as home-grown horrors such as Shaun Of The Dead (£6.7 million, $10.6 million) and 28 Days Later (£6.3 million, $10 million).
Xavier Marchand, president of worldwide distribution, Alliance Films and managing director Momentum Pictures, said with The Woman in Black occupying the number one spot in the U.K. for three weeks and its performance stateside that has seen it take more than $50 million, it indicates how British films “can resonate not only here in the U.K. but also abroad.”
Universal has been having a hell of a time getting their Universal Monsters brand back on a better path in the wake of the Dark Universe collapsing, with four movies thus far released in the years since The Mummy attempted to get that interconnected universe off the ground.
First was Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, to date the only post-Mummy hit for the Universal Monsters, followed by The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Renfield, and now Abigail. The latter three films have attempted to bring Dracula back to the screen in fresh ways, but both Demeter and Renfield severely underperformed at the box office. And while Abigail is a far better vampire movie than those two, it’s unfortunately also struggling to turn a profit.
Where does the Universal Monsters brand go from here? The good news is that Universal and Blumhouse have once again enlisted the help of Leigh Whannell for their upcoming Wolf Man reboot, which is howling its way into theaters in January 2025. This is good news, of course, because Whannell’s Invisible Man was the best – and certainly most profitable – of the post-Dark Universe movies that Universal has been able to conjure up. The film ended its worldwide run with $144 million back in 2020, a massive win considering the $7 million budget.
Given the film was such a success, you may wondering why The Invisible Man 2 hasn’t come along in these past four years. But the wait for that sequel may be coming to an end.
Speaking with the Happy Sad Confused podcast this week, The Invisible Man star Elisabeth Moss notes that she feels “very good” about the sequel’s development at this point in time.
“Blumhouse and my production company [Love & Squalor Pictures]… we are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” Moss updates this week. “And I feel very good about it.”
She adds, “We are very much intent on continuing that story.”
At the end of the 2020 movie, Elisabeth Moss’s heroine Cecilia Kass uses her stalker’s high-tech invisibility suit to kill him, now in possession of the technology that ruined her life.
Stay tuned for more on The Invisible Man 2 as we learn it.
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