Last Updated on April 2, 2025 by Angel Melanson
Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: It was a pretty rough weekend at the box office. That’s been the pattern for the vast majority of 2024 thus far, unless you live in China where Ne Zha 2 has literally made over $2 billion. In the rest of the world, the hits have been harder to come by. Even the often-reliable horror genre has short on outright hits this year. Thankfully, Blumhouse delivered a win with its latest, The Woman in the Yard. A24’s Death of a Unicorn wasn’t as fortunate though.
See also: Two Original Horror Movies Were Ignored At The Box Office
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, The Woman in the Yard was one of several new releases to arrive this past weekend. MGM’s action flick A Working Man came out on top with $15.2 million, overtaking last weekend’s champ Snow White ($14.2 million). Blumhouse’s latest had to settle for fourth place with $9.4 million in its debut. The good news is that the film carries a very modest $12 million budget, meaning it didn’t have to make a fortune. This is what Blumhouse does best.
The movie, which stars Danielle Deadwyler (Carry-On), centers on a family who encounters a woman cloaked in black mysteriously appearing in their yard. It has been met with mixed reviews and had a somewhat muted marketing campaign. Even so, as long as it doesn’t fall off a cliff in the coming weeks, Blumhouse gets its first win for the year, as Wolf Man didn’t pan out earlier this year.
A24 unfortunately suffered a bit of a disappointment as Death of a Unicorn made just $5.7 million in its debut. The film centers on a father and daughter who run over a unicorn on the way to a high-profile business meeting. As opposed to Woman in the Yard, A24 rolled out the red carpet for this one with a big marketing campaign and a premiere at SXSW. It also features a stacked cast led by Jenna Orgega (Wednesday) and Paul Rudd (Ghostbusters: Afterlife).
Even more sobering? Unicorn played on 3,05 screens over the weekend, while Woman only played on 2,842. For whatever reason, audiences are taking a “wait to stream” approach with this one. A24 will probably be okay in the end as this one carries a $15 million budget, which can easily be made up on VOD. Still, this doesn’t help in the short term and theater owners were likely bummed about the outcome here.
Save for The Monkey, which has made more than $60 million globally, theatrical horror has very few hits in 2025 thus far, and we’re a quarter of the way through. Outside of horror, it really isn’t much better, as big-budget bets like Mickey 17 and the aforementioned Snow White have bombed. Ticket sales are lagging behind 2024’s totals by 7% and last year was coming off of the SAG and WGA strikes, which upended production. This year, people are simply staying home. That’s a problem.
Is it a product issue? Have audience habits simply changed too much that only massive events like Barbie will get the masses out? Here’s hoping that’s not the case but all eyes will be on A Minecraft Movie this upcoming weekend as the industry at large is in dire need of an unqualified win. On the genre front, we’ve got Christopher Landon’s Drop arriving on April 11, which looks like it could be a winner. Fingers crossed.
You can see the full list of the top ten movies at the box office for the weekend of March 28, 2025, below. For more, get the lowdown on what’s going on with Saw XI, which has run into some trouble.
- A Working Man – $15.2 million (first weekend)
- Snow White – $14.2 million (second weekend)
- The Chosen: Last Supper – $11.4 million (first weekend)
- The Woman in the Yard – $9.4 (first weekend)
- Death of a Unicorn – $5.7 million (first weekend)
- Princess Mononoke 4K restoration – $4 million (first weekend)
- Captain America: Brave New World – $2.8 million (seventh weekend)
- Black Bag – $2.1 million (third weekend)
- Mickey 17 – $1.9 million (fourth weekend)
- Novocaine – $1.4 million (third weekend)
