How ‘Longlegs’ Shocked the Box Office to Become the Summer’s Breakout Horror Hit

Around this time last week, movie theater chain Flix Brewhouse wasn’t planning on scheduling the Neon horror film “Longlegs” at its Dallas venue in Fresco.

By Thursday around noon, though, chief revenue officer Chris Randleman noticed a notable uptick in interest at the circuit’s other locations. “We saw, ‘Oh shit, this is really popping off sales-wise,” he recalls. “We have to book this.” They rang Neon, the film’s distributor, and secured a few last-minute showtimes. “By the end of the night, we had 100 tickets sold. It usually doesn’t happen like that.”

Randleman’s hunch proved to be prophetic. “Longlegs,” an occult-tilted thriller, collected a stellar $22.6 million in its opening weekend. Directed by Osgood Perkins, the film follows Maika Monroe (“It Follows”) as F.B.I. Agent Lee Harker, who is tracking the serial killer known as Longlegs. The case takes an unexpected turn when she discovers a sinister personal connection to the murderer and works to stop him before he strikes again. Ticket sales shattered expectations and set a new box office record for Neon. Sydney Sweeney’s religious horror film “Immaculate” previously ranked as the indie company’s biggest start with $5.3 million in March. Neon put “Longleg’s” returns in perspective by noting that only 15 independent studio releases in the past decade opened above $20 million.

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“They didn’t reinvent the wheel but tapped into the kind of movie that people haven’t seen in a while,” says Randleman. “It’s a good movie. But beyond that, the studio had a brilliant marketing campaign that felt real, unsettling and dangerous.”

Elissa Federoff, Neon’s distribution chief, said the studio started to release materials for its big summer movie in January. Then, it kept priming the pipe with more creepy teasers over the next few months.

“We allowed this to keep building,” says Federoff. “We were encouraged by the filmmakers — by everyone we worked with — to create something that reflected the wild ride that is ‘Longlegs.'”

Neon succeeded not just in intriguing audiences but actually getting them to buy a ticket. Analysts agree the studio smartly generated word-of-mouth by refusing to reveal the look of the film’s nightmare-inducing villain, portrayed by Nicolas Cage. A conventional route would have been to revolve the promotional efforts around a singular onscreen presence like Cage, the Oscar-winning actor who has become synonymous with a certain kind of scene-chewery.

Neon did, however, stoke the scares with other cryptic tactics. In one of the innovative trailers, scored to Monroe’s actual thumping heartbeat, viewers get to see and hear the first time the actor witnessed Cage’s terrifying transformation into Longlegs. According to the spot, Monroe’s resting pulse of 76 beats per minute skyrocketed to 170 bpm when she was face-to-face with Cage’s full prosthetics and makeup. The studio’s marketing department also built buzz by setting up a phone number that people could call to hear an unhinged message from Cage, as well as creating a ’90s-era website that details the crimes of “thisSatan-worshippingpsycho.”

“Every indie film hopes for this kind of viral campaign, but 1% of them actually work. That’s the difference here,” says Exhibitor Relations analyst Jeff Bock. “People have compared it to ‘Blair Witch,’ and it did give you those feelings when you were looking at billboards. They were obscure and got people wondering.”

Horror has been one of the most reliable theatrical genres, but it’s been a disappointing year for movies about things that go bump in the night. Recent offerings like “The First Omen” ($53 million globally), Blumhouse’s haunted “Night Swim” ($54 million globally), the vampire-inspired “Abigail” ($42 million globally) and Lionsgate’s sinister “Imaginary” ($39 million globally) failed to strike a nerve with moviegoers. In the case of “Longlegs,” Neon kept costs low for production (the budget was under $10 million) as well as the digital-focused marketing campaign that cost roughly the same amount as it did to make the movie — making for some bloody-good profit margins.

“We’ve seen a bit of overcrowding in the horror genre, so a lot of those films didn’t click with audiences and performed modestly,” says Shawn Robbins, the founder of BoxOfficeTheory. “‘Longlegs’ had divisive reactions, which contributed even more to interest. Everything it earns from here is a cherry on top of another cherry.”

Even though 2024 horror movies have struggled to break out, Federoff believes the genre will remain popular with moviegoers. That’s because, unlike say thrillers, rom-coms or crime dramas, studios have continued to produce scary films for theaters.

“It’s one of the few genres that is not overly exploited on streaming,” Federoff says. “Audiences can’t just find this in their living room. They understand that they have to come out to theatersto experience this collectively, in a dark space.”

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“Longlegs” also served as effective counterprogramming in a summer that’s been dominated by kiddie fare, such as Disney’s Pixar sequel “Inside Out 2” ($1.34 billion globally to date) and Universal and Illumination’s “Despicable Me 4” ($434 million globally to date). It’s a feat that few indies have achieved in post-pandemic times, where arthouse movies haven’t registered much of a pulse. Original films, in general, have yet to recapture their stride. Over the weekend, “Longlegs” easily (and impressively) outgrossed fellow newcomer “Fly Me to the Moon,” a $100 million-budgeted romantic comedy from Sony and Apple. That film, starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, debuted to a dispiriting $10 million.

“‘Longlegs’ is one of the biggest stories of the summer. We finally have an indie success in the middle of blockbuster season,” says Bock. “We haven’t seen that in a while.”

Brent Lang contributed to this report.

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