Written by Kianna Best on Oct 16, 2024. Posted in Production News

Terrifier 3 frightens off the competition for the October box office

Damien Leone’s frightful Art the Clown is dominating the box office with Terrifier 3. Overtaking the hit and miss of Joker Folie à Deux, the gory horror is the biggest movie in the US with a USD18.3 million weekend opening.

Image courtesy of Jesse Korman / Dark Age Cinema

Leone’s Terrifier movies have been a sure success from the beginning, following the lead character’s sinister presence in a number of short films since 2008. For his first feature in 2016, the USD 35,000 budget film made back that amount ten times over, the second in 2022 60 times its USD 250,000 budget and the third an impressive USD 18.3 million on its USD 2 million production cost.

The third installment sees Art, played by David Howard Thronton who took over the wole for the first feature, embark on a petrifying killing spree, tormenting the residents of Miles county all during the festivities of Christmas Eve. The Terrifier franchsie finds a strange line between gruesome and funny, with the first film stating “he thinks what he’s doing is funny because he’s laughing,” an image created with the help of makeup fx team Tinsley Studio.

The horror film has been a dominant amongst this year’s movie releases from bodies such as A24, Blumhouse and NEON leading the way for the independent film companies’ presence in the genre. The horror run will continue with upcoming 2025 release of Until Dawn, a screen adaptation of the hit video game from director David F. Sandberg  made by Screen Gems and PlayStation Productions, as well as Sten C. Miller Werewolves from Briarcliff Entertainment and The Solution Entertainment Group.