DC’s Clayface delivered a $43M global opening for the newly combined Paramount-Warner Bros studio, handing Skydance its second consecutive No. 1 weekend. Domestic box office led with $24M; overseas markets contributed $19M from 76 territories.
The number is below the $45M the studio had hoped for, but it lands against a reported net production cost of $44M before prints and advertising. The question of whether Disney should be worried is premature, but the early evidence says Skydance is building a repeatable playbook: mid-budget genre titles, strong exit scores, and global comps that hold up.
Why the horror exit score matters
Horror titles rarely earn top audience grades. Clayface’s A- puts it in a small club with Get Out, Weapons and Obsession. That suggests the gross-out scenes DC bosses James Gunn and Peter Safran reportedly reacted to are turning into positive word of mouth. For media planners, an exit score like this is an early signal that a title can play beyond its fanboy base.
Clayface vs Other Mommy
The cleanest comp is Universal/Blumhouse Atomic Monster’s Other Mommy, which started with $45.6M two weeks ago from fewer markets. Clayface’s $19M overseas start from 76 markets compares with Other Mommy’s $17.8M from 50.
- UK: $2.6M for Clayface, ahead of Other Mommy.
- Australia: $1.3M vs $1.1M.
- France: $1.2M, matched.
- Brazil: $879K vs $751K.
- Mexico: $1.4M vs $1.9M.
- Italy: $873K vs $2.2M.
Clayface also banked $593K in Germany and $589K in Korea, where Other Mommy has not yet opened.
The wider slate and the next No. 1
Skydance is building a distribution cadence. Even if A24’s You Can See Everything tops the Halloween frame stateside, the studio has Warner Bros Animation’s The Cat in the Hat positioned to return it to No. 1 in early November. The strategy is less about any single weekend and more about using franchise volume to keep the merged entity visible.
The rest of the global ledger is healthy. Other Mommy has reached $94.8M worldwide. Street Fighter stands at $76.3M, Wildwood opened to $14.3M, Resident Evil has $384.5M, and Verity has $162.7M.
For our audience, the takeaway is to read the full cost-and-exit picture before calling a No. 1 opening soft. A $43M start can be a win when the net cost is $44M and audiences are grading it like a breakout.
Source: Deadline
