“Longlegs” has some long legs at the box office. After three weeks of release, the occult-tilted thriller has collected a stellar $58.6 million in North America, enough to become the highest-grossing indie horror film of the last decade.
“Longlegs” surpassed A24’s “Talk to Me” ($48 million domestically) to achieve the milestone. “Talk to Me” has a bigger global tally with $92.1 million, whereas “Longlegs” has earned $62 million globally to date.
The film also ranks as Neon‘s highest-grossing film of all time, outperforming the Oscar-winning “Parasite” with $53.36 million in North America. (Neon is a domestic distributor and typically doesn’t control all of the international markets for its films.)
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“Longlegs” opened earlier in July and became a sleeper hit, earning $22.6 million in its first weekend and setting a new box office record for Neon in the process. Sydney Sweeney’s religious horror film “Immaculate” previously ranked as the indie company’s biggest start with $5.3 million in March. For context, only 15 independent studio releases in the past decade opened above $20 million. Ticket sales remained strong in its sophomore outing with $11.7 million, a 48% decline from its debut, and again in its third weekend with $6.7 million from 2,730 theaters.
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.
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 (Nicolas Cage). 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.
