Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is now opening to $63M and $109M worldwide. Domestically, that’s the second biggest horror opening of the year from Blumhouse-Atomic Monster after Conjuring: Last Rites ($84M). Yesterday was a great hold of -33%, better than the -39% of the first film, with $20.7M banked.

And as we said all along it’s the biggest opening for a post-Thanksgiving theatrical release. Technically, Freddy’s 2 unseats the previous record held by Tom Cruise’s Last Samurai ($24.2M), but also beats the opening of 2001’s Ocean’s Eleven ($38.1M) and 2007’s The Golden Compass ($25.7M), which though weren’t immediate releases in the post Thanksgiving weekend, bowed in the 49th frame of the year. Hence, Freddy’s 2 is also the biggest opening ever for the 49th weekend of the year.

Other records broken: Freddy’s 2 is the top opening for a December horror release (beating Scream 2‘s $32.9M), the best December opening ever for Universal besting Peter Jackson’s King Kong ($50.1M), and the third best opening for a PG-13 horror movie after Five Nights at Freddy’s ($80M) and World War Z ($66.4M).

Why did Universal roll the dice on what is normally a dead weekend? Anything opening prior to Christmas always gambles on not pulling in a full audience. Universal distribution knew that the fans of Freddy’s are a hot affinity group. They’ll come out whenever, wherever this movie is playing. Once again, massive turnout by the under 25 demo at 77%, and a huge turnout by Hispanic and Latino moviegoers at 38%.

At a time when the industry is rattled by the pending union of Netflix and Warner Bros, and whether or not the former will collapse the window, the success of Freddy’s 2 should come as bullhorn about the power of theatrical, and what consumers really want. When it’s big, they want to see it on a big screen with a ton of people. Evident in the sellouts that occurred earlier this week with Netflix’s Stranger Things finale. Heck, Netflix could have foregone a day-and-date on streaming for the finale and made a pure gross from the finale alone on the big screen (again, talent residual contracts prevent them from doing so).

Exclaimed Universal Domestic Distribution Boss Jim Orr, “With Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, Emma Tammi, Scott Cawthon and our great partners at Blumhouse delivered a raucous, thrilling, scary sequel that our very enthusiastic fanbase could not wait to come see and experience in theatres around the world this weekend.  These spectacular box office results were exactly what the industry needed.”

What was the sell in part 2? The costumed robotic creatures leave the pizza parlor and head into the real world.

Comscore estimates the weekend at $150M, a record for the post-Thanksgiving period, and the box office stat org is reporting that the $8 billion threshold for 2025 has been reached. This is the third time post Covid that $8 billion has been reached. Last year we finaled at $8.57 billion.

Beams Comscore’s Head of Marketplace Trends Paul Dergarabedian, “With less than a month to go in the box office year, the $8B domestic YTD threshold has finally been reached through Sunday as movie theaters are presenting an eclectic selection of films from major and independent distributors thus creating a cinematic traffic jam of sorts that’s developing over the next few weeks.”

He adds, “However, it’s shaping up to be a December to remember with literally something for everyone landing on big screens this month. Could the $9B domestic annual revenue threshold be reached? Only once has this happened since 2020 and that was in 2023, the year of Barbenheimer so it will be a challenge to hit that mark this year.”

via Deadline