Clayface, DC’s horror take on the Batman villain, has passed $56.6 million at the North American box office, according to Box Office Mojo — a solid result for a film that opened to $24 million three weekends ago and has now survived the busiest weekend of the autumn. The film took $2.025 million on Friday alone, up 109.5 percent on the previous day as the weekend crowd arrived, from 2,946 theatres.
The Friday figure is the telling one. Clayface was the only holdover in the top ten to grow its daily gross that sharply on Friday, and it did so while four new wide releases — Godzilla Minus Zero, The Cat in the Hat, Drummer Boy and Wild Horse Nine — were taking the premium screens. It finished the weekend in fifth place with $6.675 million, and its $56.6 million cumulative total makes it one of the steadier performers of the autumn.
A horror film with legs
Clayface opened on October 23 to $24 million, and its second weekend held well enough to keep it in the conversation through Halloween. The third weekend is where most horror films fade, as the Halloween audience moves on — but the Friday jump suggests the film found a second audience in the November crowd, the same weekend that pushed You Can See Everything to $79.8 million.
The film’s success matters to DC for a second reason: it is a horror film built around a villain, not a superhero, and it arrived with a modest reported budget by comic-book standards. Trade coverage has described the $56.6 million total as a decent success against that budget, and the film’s international run is still adding to the total.
The weekend it survived
This was the weekend that remade the chart. Three new films entered the top five, the overall market nearly doubled to $116.35 million, and only two of the top ten were traditional studio releases. Clayface, a Warner Bros. release, was one of them — and it held its ground while the newcomers took the screens. For a horror film in its third weekend, on the busiest frame of the season, that is a result worth noting.
Related: This Weekend’s Top 10 Was the Most Diverse in Box Office History | Godzilla Minus Zero Confirms $31.6M Record Opening Weekend
