Now Focus Features’ Second Biggest Movie Ever

EXCLUSIVE: If there’s one takeaway from the holiday box office season, audiences couldn’t quit Focus Features‘ period gothic horror movie Nosferatu.

The Robert Eggers-directed title is now the Universal specialty label’s second highest-grossing release at the domestic box office at $84.4 million, overtaking 2005’s three-time Oscar winner Brokeback Mountain ($83M) and ranking behind the studio’s top-grossing title ever, 2019’s Downton Abbey ($96.8M). On a global basis, Nosferatu ranks as Focus’ seventh highest-grossing title with north of $142M worldwide.

Also noteworthy, Nosferatu is reaching itsg reat heights at the B.O. sans award noms from the Golden Globes or Oscars (which have yet to be announced) or festival buzz; such lynchpins were in part responsible for the breakout success of 2005’s Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee’s gay Western.

Focus also has bragging rights in that Nosferatu beats the domestic haul of any title, including horror, when compared with its specialty rival A24. The latter studio’s highest-grossing movie of all time stateside is the multi-Oscar winner Everything Everywhere All at Once at $77M.

Given Nosferatu‘s success in theaters, the movie is getting a slightly longer theatrical window than the standard Focus release, which has been 18 days to PVOD for most titles last year.

RELATED: ‘Nosferatu’: Read The Screenplay For Robert Eggers’ Dream Project Revamping A Gothic Nightmare

Horror period gothic isn’t easy at the box office, often dividing traditional horror fans and arthouse audiences. Movies such as 2015’s Crimson Peak ($31M domestic) and 2021’s Nightmare Alley ($11.3M) have struggled in finding theatrical crowds, the latter title largely a victim of skittish arthouse moviegoers during Covid, in addition to Spider-Man: No Way Home taking all the oxygen out the marketplace.

Many Focus insiders pegged the success of Nosferatu to Eggers’ growing reputation as a must-see-in-the-theater auteur among the 18-34 set (that demo showed up at close to 60% for the movie). His previous film at Focus, the New Regency co-financed gritty Viking epic The Northman, found a huge audience on PVOD and in downstreams, making it a profitable title on Universal’s side of the ledger for the $70M production (before P&A). In Screen Engine/Comscore PostTrak audience exits, 32% said they went to see Nosferatu because of Eggers.

There are other factors in play for Nosferatu‘s momentum, read there hasn’t been a high-gloss Dracula movie in some time, the last arguably being Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 title Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the $82.5M lifetime (unadjusted) cume of which Nosferatu also has topped at the box office. A huge 43% of Nosferatu‘s crowd went because of the movie’s subject/plot.

Credit is also due to the Lisa Bunnell-led domestic distribution team, which chose December 25 to launch a horror movie. While horror has always served as great counterprogramming at a ho-ho-ho time of year (hello, Scream), the release date itself simply conveys the word “event” to moviegoers. Nosferatu‘s profile was further bolstered in its availability on Imax and Dolby screens. Despite the fight for premium-format screens over the year-end holidays, it grabbed late-night showtimes from family titles Mufasa: The Lion King and Sonic the Hedgehog 3, grossing $3.5M in Imax alone. PostTrak moviegoers at 10% said they watched Nosferatu in a large-format or PLF auditorium.

On CinemaScore, Nosferatu received a B- grade, a range that counts as high praise for a horror movie as they rarely nab A’s (Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula also received a B- back in the day). Fifty-four percent of the overall audience said they’d definitely recommend the Eggers movie, while 34% said they’d probably recommend. Women over 25 are at the highest recommendation score of any demo at 57% followed by women under 25 at 54% and men over 25 at 53%. Nosferatu played on the coasts but also in the South, where Latino and Hispanic audiences repped close to a third of business.

The Peter Kujawski-led Focus Features noticed great intrigue brewing for the movie starring Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Bill Skarsgård and Aaron Taylor-Johnson after dropping the first trailer six months ago; it clicked 65M views, the most ever for the Uni label and higher than The Northman and Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City. Organic share rates and engagement were incredibly high. The hook in the campaign from Focus vice chairman Jason Cassidy was the trailer’s tagline “He is coming!” — not to mention images of Skarsgård as the monster weren’t revealed in any materials.

Other stunts in the Nosferatu campaign included 250-pound sarcophaguses in theater lobbies such as the Alamo Drafthouse that denizens could play around in; the NBCUniversal online gift store sold such beds for $20,000. Crypt dinners were hosted in NYC with TikTok influencers and at the Hollywood Cemetery in Los Angeles with YouTube and Bloody Disgusting tastemakers. There was a winter solstice pop-up in Hollywood and at The Grove, where fans could snap up merchandise and have photo-ops with the carriage prop.

For those keeping score, Focus Features had the initial release of Coraline in 2010, but that only grossed $75.2M for the label and $125M worldwide. The most recent 15th anniversary release of the Laika animation title via Fathom Events pushed Coraline to $116.8M stateside, $185.8M WW.

Among this year’s potential needle-moving titles for Focus Features are the Steven Soderbergh-directed, David Koepp-scripted Michael Fassbender-Cate Blanchett spy movie Black Bag (March 14), Downton Abbey 3 on September 12, and the reteam of Yorgos Lanthimos, Emma Stone and Jesse Plemmons in Bugonia (November 7).