One of the greatest mysteries of modern horror is why it’s taking so much time and effort for a third installment in the Happy Death Day franchise to come together behind the scenes, when the first two entries only served to further enhance Blumhouse’s reputation as one of Hollywood’s most reliable hit factories.
Made for a grand total of less than $15 million, director Christopher Landon’s whip-smart pair of blackly comedic slashers earned identical Rotten Tomatoes scores of 71 percent, while combining to earn a massively profitable $190 million at the box office. Sure, takings may have plummeted by 50 percent when Happy Death Day 2 U rolled around, but the sequel was still deeply in the black by the time the pennies were counted.
While Happy Death Day 3 remains in the state of perpetual limbo it can’t seem to escape from, streaming subscribers have been rushing to check out the OG instead. As per FlixPatrol, Jessica Rothe’s Tree Gelbman having to relive the day of her demise over and over again has become one of the most popular titles on Prime Video just in time for the weekend, a period when horror typically tends to over-perform on-demand.
The threequel isn’t quite dead yet, but there’s an air of life beginning to imitate art as Happy Death Day 3 takes a cue out of Tree’s book to a certain extent; much like her daily existence, the next outing in the Scream-meets-Groundhog Day saga looks as though it’s going to survive and make it past the finishing line, only to wake up back where it started to relive yet another day in development hell.