The horror genre is the gift that keeps on giving for the Hollywood money men, with the vast majority of titles tending to turn a profit by the time their opening weekend is over, and the low risk and high reward model seeing a succession of low budget chillers hitting the big screen on a regular basis, and they’re not even required to pull in particularly big numbers to end up in the black.
A lot of the movies tend to be sequels, remakes and reboots, while others end up getting panned by critics, so it was a little ironic when Fede Alvarez’s Don’t Breathe turned out to be a breath of fresh air when it was released in March 2016. An original concept that blended the home invasion thriller with the tropes of horror, it was one of the most inventive and subversive entries the genre had seen for a while.
It also happened to be a massive hit, raking in over $157 million globally on a budget of less than $10 million, securing an impressive Rotten Tomatoes score of 88% in the process. The cliffhanger ending left the door wide open for further installments, too, and the second outing for Stephen Lang’s Norman Nordstrom will arrive in August.
Not only that, but insider Daniel Richtman is now claiming that a third movie is already in development, which wouldn’t be a surprise in the slightest. After all, the second Don’t Breathe looks to refit the concept and position Lang as an antihero of sorts after he’s forced to protect a young girl from a ruthless gang of home invaders, and even if the box office isn’t back to normal by the summer, the project isn’t exactly required to break the bank in order to make money.
