‘A Quiet Place’ prequel box office speaks volumes as Costner’s Western gets a bumpy start ( abcnews.go.com )

“ A Quiet Place: Day One ” is making noise at the box office. The prequel earned an estimated $53 million in its first weekend in North American theaters, according to studio estimates Sunday.

It’s both a franchise best and significantly more than expected. Going into the weekend, prerelease tracking had “Day One” pegged for a $40 million debut, but audiences were clearly more enthusiastic to see the action-horror starring Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn and released by Paramount. The same could not be said for Kevin Costner’s “ Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1,” which opened to $11 million.

The ”Quiet Place” victory wasn’t quite enough to snag the coveted first place spot on the charts, though. That honor again went to Disney and Pixar’s juggernaut “ Inside Out 2,” which added an estimated $57.4 million in its third weekend in theaters, and crossed $1 billion globally.

There's a distant possibility that the places will shift when actuals are released Monday. But either way it’s good news for movie theaters in a summer season that’s finally heating up but still running far behind last year (down 19%) and pre-pandemic norms (down 36% from 2019).

“Inside Out 2” continues to be a box office phenomenon, the likes of which the industry hasn’t seen since “Barbie” almost a year ago. In just three weeks of release, it's earned nearly $470 million in North America and $545.5 million internationally, bringing its global total to $1.01 billion. The sequel is the only 2024 release to cross the billion dollar mark and it did it in just 19 days, a record for an animated film.