{"id":602051,"date":"2026-08-31T23:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T23:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/602051\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T23:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T23:40:10","slug":"the-terminally-online-showed-up-in-theaters-this-weekend-for-buddy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/602051\/","title":{"rendered":"The Terminally Online Showed Up in Theaters This Weekend for ‘Buddy’"},"content":{"rendered":"

For months, online ads have been peppering audiences with glimpses of Buddy<\/a>, a \u201990s children\u2019s TV unicorn who turns creepy and murderous in what IndieWire called way back at Sundance the first great Midnight Movie of 2026.<\/a> The distributors of the film<\/a> \u201cBuddy,\u201d Roadside Attractions<\/a> along with Saban Films, started introducing people to Buddy and his fake TV universe early and often, yet they kept the character\u2019s mystique intact, releasing three teasers but never a full trailer that hinted too much at the film\u2019s actual plot.<\/p>\n

It was a big risk for a movie that is considerably strange, to the point that the first 30 minutes are almost entirely consumed within the world of a \u201cBarney\u201d parody. But the first teaser racked up 20 million views<\/a> when it first dropped, and Buddy too amassed a following of 500,000 fans across social, which is enormous for an original horror character. <\/p>\n

\"THE<\/a> \"'The<\/a> <\/p>\n

People delighted in a fan club in which you could text with Buddy or get voicemail messages from the character. Online, Buddy responded to brands like Care Bears as though he was also a real \u201990s staple you may have just forgotten about. And some of the initial fans in the trailers\u2019 comments likely created a lot of converts to \u201cToo Many Cooks<\/a>,\u201d \u201cBuddy\u201d director Casper Kelly\u2019s surreal, cult masterpiece that satirizes \u201980s and \u201990s sitcoms with an unshakeable jingle.<\/p>\n

The question was whether all of those people would actually show up to the theater and take that online enthusiasm to the box office<\/a>. The gambit paid off. <\/p>\n

\u201cBuddy\u201d opened on just 1,258 screens this weekend and made $5.3 million, more than doubling initial tracking projections of around $2.5 million and making it one of the best limited release openings of the year. \u201cBuddy\u201d finished the weekend at No. 6 on the domestic chart, just behind \u201cThe Dog Stars,\u201d which isn\u2019t shabby, considering \u201cBuddy\u201d doesn\u2019t star Jacob Elordi.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes a big risk, and we felt like that risk might be exactly what makes the movie work,\u201d Roadside Attractions head and co-founder Howard Cohen told IndieWire. \u201cIt was specifically the risk of content, its extreme originality, provocative structure, and themes.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the distributor\u2019s second-best opening ever, behind only its biggest hit in its 23-year history, \u201cI Can Only Imagine,\u201d which opened to $17 million and made $83 million back in 2018. After just a single weekend, \u201cBuddy\u201d is one of Roadside\u2019s biggest releases this decade in the post-COVID era. Saban Films set opening weekend records as well.<\/p>\n

Roadside sees \u201cBuddy\u201d as \u201ca star\u201d and a potential new face in indie horror moving forward, a character that could be on par with the \u201cTerrifier\u201d franchise\u2019s Art the Clown<\/a>, if given the room to grow. Some of the better comps may be to a few other recent indie horror movies, including a couple it outpaced. <\/p>\n

\u201cClown in a Cornfield\u201d from last year, about a murderous clown named Frendo, opened to $3.6 million from even more screens and topped out at $7.2 million domestic. Luc Besson\u2019s \u201cDracula\u201d as released by one of Roadside\u2019s frequent partners in Vertical earlier this year opened to $4.4 million and made $13 million domestic. It\u2019s even comparable to some of Neon\u2019s recent horror entries. \u201cLeviticus,\u201d another midnight movie out of this year\u2019s Sundance, opened on only 1,000+ screens to $2.6 million and finished with $7.2 million, and \u201cHokum\u201d opened on 1,800+ screens with a $6.4 million and $17 million domestic haul.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a big shift for Roadside, which cut its teeth on prestige indies like \u201cManchester by the Sea,\u201d \u201cThe Peanut Butter Falcon,\u201d and \u201cMud.\u201d Roadside and Saban acquired the title out of Sundance well before \u201cObsession\u201d or \u201cBackrooms\u201d were in theaters, but they felt even then that \u201cBuddy\u201d could connect strongly with young people.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are focused on, where is the audience now? Who\u2019s coming to the movies?,\u201d Cohen said, pointing to trends in rising box office but falling attendance. \u201cMost people now get their marketing for movies online, even the older demo. So the other forms of advertising that were very, very expensive, you can do a more economical and more focused release<\/a> for movies online, and that\u2019s been a big shift in what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cohen said the distributor\u2019s other biggest release this year, the faith-based \u201cA Great Awakening\u201d about a young Benjamin Franklin, benefitted from a dedicated online campaign, even if it was targeting the +55 crowd. That film has made $8.1 million domestic as Roadside\u2019s highest-grossing of 2026 so far, a number \u201cBuddy\u201d could likely catch if it manages to expand onto more screens during a busier Labor Day weekend. Roadside\u2019s days of doing platform releases exclusively in New York and Los Angeles and relying on traditional ad buys or strong reviews are largely over.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all feeding into the choice of film, because in most cases it has to be a movie that you can market widely enough. The days of a movie being pure review and NPR-driven \u2026 you could still do it, but it\u2019s much harder for like 10 different reasons,\u201d Cohen said. \u201cThere are just not that many movies where it\u2019s going to work, so it\u2019s changed what you can release.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For months, online ads have been peppering audiences with glimpses of Buddy, a \u201990s children\u2019s TV unicorn who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":602052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1239,243338,146,878,85,46,397,30800],"class_list":["post-602051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-box-office","tag-buddy","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-movies","tag-roadside-attractions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}