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Weekend box office: Pixar’s Hoppers opened around $41M domestic, while Warner Bros.' $80M noir monster The Bride! tanked with an estimated $7–8M start; Paramount/Spyglass’ Scream 7 suffered a 74% second-week drop after a $63.6M opening but still ranks No. 2 this weekend.
Smile 3 is in development but franchise creator/director Parker Finn is reportedly unlikely to return to direct as he’s attached to other projects (including a Possession remake) and has a multi‑year first‑look deal with Paramount; previous entries' budgets/grosses ($17M budget -> $217M global for Smile 1; Smile 2 ~$137M) underscore continued franchise profitability.
Paramount set Paranormal Activity 8 for May 21, 2027 with Ian Tuason directing and a co-finance/production partnership with Blumhouse-Atomic Monster; producers include James Wan, Jason Blum and franchise creator Oren Peli, and the announcement reiterates the franchise’s unusually high ROI and legacy as a low-budget horror cash cow.
A24 will release Kane Parsons’ feature Backrooms theatrically May 29; the film—based on Parsons’ viral YouTube series—stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass and others, was directed by Parsons from a Will Soodik script, and counts A24, The North Road Company/Chernin, 21 Laps and Atomic Monster among financiers/producers.
Blumhouse–Atomic Monster and Behaviour Interactive have hired David Leslie Johnston‑McGoldrick and Alexandre Aja to write a feature adaptation of the hit survival-horror game Dead by Daylight (movie rights picked up in 2023); Wan and Blum produce and the search for a director is underway.
Paramount (in the $111B Paramount–Skydance acquisition of WBD) plans to consolidate operations around the Warner Bros. Burbank lot over time, repurpose Paramount’s Melrose lot for commercial/office/retail use and lease space for film production — a move aimed at eliminating redundancies across two premium studio lots.
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