Terrifier 3 Just Passed A Massive Box Office Milestone No One Saw Coming

Movies Horror Movies

For the past couple of weekends at the box office, all eyes have been on director Parker Finn's "Smile 2" and Sony's latest Marvel Comics adaptation "Venom: The Last Dance," which topped the charts this past weekend. All the while though, director Damien Leone's ultra gory slasher "Terrifier 3" has been quietly carving it up, continuing to add to its already impressive total. So much so that the horror sequel has now set quite an eye-opening record, cementing its place in cinema history.

"Terrifier 3 crosses $50M at the worldwide box office and officially becomes the highest grossing unrated film, even surpassing the highest grossing NC-17 films," Leone recently said on Twitter. Indeed, the unrated slasher added $4.7 million domestically in its third weekend, bringings its domestic total to $44.5 million. The film has also added $10.5 million overseas thus far, giving it a $55.1 million running global total. It's been going strong ever since the sequel's shocking, char-topping opening weekend north of $18 million. No unrated movie in history has made more money, and this one still has a lot of gas left in the tank.

Granted, not a lot of movies enter theaters unrated, as it's generally viewed as very limiting in terms of commercial prospects. Interestingly enough, Beyoncé's 2023 concert film "Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé" was the previous record holder for an unrated film, pulling in $45 million during its theatrical run last year. For whatever reason, the pop star didn't go through the process of getting her concert film rated by the MPAA. Now though, Art the Clown stands tall above Beyoncé. What a time to be alive.

Terrifier 3 is in uncharted territory at the box office

As it stands, the highest-grossing NC-17 movie ever at the global box office is 2007's "Lust, Caution" ($67 million worldwide), which was directed by Ang Lee. The way things are going, "Terrifier 3" is going to pass that mark in the coming weeks and will stand alone above all other NC-17 and unrated films in history. Truly wild stuff.

It's not as though unrated movies never succeed at the box office: Just look at IFC's "In a Violent Nature" breaking through earlier this year. But we're talking about cheap movies that go on to make a couple million dollars before making the bulk of their money on VOD, home video, streaming, etc. In this case, we're looking at an uncompromising, ultra-violent film that is part of a franchise that has been around for more than a decade now. Yet, here it is, becoming orders of magnitude larger than any of the prior installments and besting big-budget comic book movies like "Joker: Folie a Deux" along the way. It's truly unlike anything we've ever seen before.

"Terrifier 2" shocked the industry in 2022 when it made more than $15 million worldwide against a mere $250,000 budget. 2016's "Terrifier" was essentially a non-starter at the box office and found life as a cult film of sorts on home video/streaming. That led to the third installment, which sees Art the Clown slaughtering people at Christmas, being put on the fast track. All of the buzz from "Terrifier 2" bled over and increased the audience for these films by an awful lot. Considering that this franchise traces its roots back to the little-seen 2013 horror anthology "All Hallows' Eve" and, before that, a pair of shorts directed by Leone, it's all pretty amazing.

"Terrifier 3" is in theaters now. The 4K and Blu-ray release is also available for pre-order on Amazon.