Jaws dropped in disbelief across Hollywood when The Conjuring: Last Rites opened to a record-smashing $84 million domestically over the Sept. 5-7 weekend, instead of an expected $35 million-plus. Put another way, the New Line and Warner Bros. horror pic earned nearly as much in its debut, if not more, than the previous eight titles in the Conjuring Universe grossed in their entire runs.
It gets better. Overseas, Last Rites started off with a far better-than-expected $110 million for a worldwide debut of $194 million — a record for a horror film — in the latest win for Warner Bros. Pictures co-chairs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy, who only six or seven months ago found themselves being intensely criticized after several high-profile misses.
Then came the rebound of all rebounds, beginning in April with A Minecraft Movie, which grossed $957 million globally, and Ryan Coogler’s original horror pic Sinners, which began silencing naysayers in grossing nearly $370 million globally. That was followed by this summer’s successful reboot Final Destination: Bloodlines ($307 million); and Weapons, an original horror title from filmmaker Zach Cregger that has astonished in earning north of $250 million to date. New Line, home of the Final Destination and Conjuring franchises, also handled Weapons after De Luca beat out rivals in paying $38 million for rights for Cregger’s hotly sought-after project.
De Luca and Abdy spoke with The Hollywood Reporter following the debut of Last Rites, and addressed the tumult they endured. “This job comes with scrutiny. We think that’s appropriate,” De Luca. “It’s never fun to be under the microscope. But of course, we know things the public doesn’t know. We know the test scores. We have tracking. We felt pretty good about the hand we were holding. We just wanted the movies to come out.”
Adds Abdy, “There’s always going to be speculation in our business. But I think what’s so satisfying is that audiences are showing up for so many kinds of movies.”
The duo praised New Line boss Richard Brenner and director Michael Chaves for the most recent victory. Pundits, too, are particularly impressed by Last Rites, considering it’s the fourth installment in the core franchise and the ninth in the overall Conjuring Universe, which is the top-grossing horror franchise in history. The pic continued to do notable business at the Monday box office as its global total crossed $210 million.
“The list of realistic comps is definitely short,” says Shawn Robbins, founder of Box Office Theory. “This reminds me a little of Fast & Furious and the explosion it saw around the middle-to-late chapters, including Hobbs & Shaw as a big spin-off, before F9 and Fast X started a downward trend.”
The campaign leaned heavily into it being the final film featuring Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson as real-life supernatural investigators Lorraine and Ed Warren. The movie also features the characters’ daughter, Judy, who is now grown up.
“The ‘finale factor’ is significant here, in my opinion, but one wonders if there is more to it than that,” says Robbins. He may be on to something. At the beginning of the year, De Luca and Abdy shook things up when showing former marketing Josh Goldstine the door and elevating Dana Nusbaum and Christian Davin to run marketing alongside John Stanford, head of theatrical creative advertising.
Sources say the new marketing structure has allowed for more innovative campaigns, including relying more heavily on social media and digital. That in turns helps the creative side of the aisle, whether production execs at Warners proper, New Line or at James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC Studios, home of Superman (Gunn and Safran, the latter of whom had long been involved with the Conjuring series as a producer, report directly to David Zaslav).
Directed by Gunn, Superman is the top-grossing superhero pic of the year with more than $614 million in global ticket sales. Warners marketing and distribution team also worked on the release of Apple Original Films’ blockbuster F1: The Movie, which has amassed $619 million in worldwide ticket sales to rank as Brad Pitt’s top-grossing film and the top sports pic of all time, not adjusted for inflation.
Abdy says the journey she and De Luca embarked on at Warner Bros. was to build a diverse slate of films, whether a movie based on known IP, such as Minecraft, or an original swing, or reinvigorating a long-dormant franchise. And whenever a new movie from their shop opens, such as Last Rites, she goes to a theater to see the reaction. “It shows me the business is alive and well if you can ignite that core audience, and then expand it from there,” she says.
Warners is less than two percentage points behind Disney in terms of 2025 box office marketshare, though it’s worth noting Warners has surely spent far less than Disney on its movies in total, considering mid-budget hits like Final Destination and Last Rites. So far this year, eight of its films have opened in first place, more than any other studio. And it’s the first time ever that a studio has had seven consecutive films open to $40 million or more, even as the overall box office continues to struggle and breakout hits become few and far between, much less to the degree of the Last Rites.
“To have them overperform to this level is really a testament to the filmmakers and everyone who works at our various labels and the marketing and distribution executives,” says De Luca. “We really wanted to try to produce things as efficiently as possible, widen those margins of profitability and really get to young moviegoers in an innovative and efficient way through these viral campaigns. And I have to say, our people have just knocked it out of the park.”
Up next? Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel One Battle After Another (Sept. 26), starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
“There’s nothing more public than opening a movie globally,” says De Luca. “You can’t hide from whether it connects or it doesn’t connect.”
The film earned a raucous reaction at Monday’s premiere at the TCL Chinese Theatre. And sources say Warners intends on launching an awards campaign for not just One Battle, but also for Sinners and Weapons. It’s rare for a studio to push a horror feature in the Oscars race, much less two. But the studio hopes it can follow in the footsteps of Silence of the Lambs, which won five Oscars, including best picture, and Get Out, which took a screenplay statue.