One of the best parts of the holiday season are all the new Christmas movies. While most of this year’s noteworthy holiday romps are on streaming, there’s one action comedy looking to make a bloody splash at the Christmas box office. That movie would beViolent Night. The hard-R film that seesStranger Things’David Harbourplay a ruthlessly jolly Santa Claus opens this weekend on December 2. Now, the film is estimated the make $10 million in its opening weekend in 3500 theaters throughout North America.
While that number might seem like a lump of coal, this action heavy take on Santa only took $20 million to make, a modest budget when compared to most modern genre films. That also won’t be enough to topBlack Panther: Wakanda Forever,which is looking to make another $22-$25 million this weekend. On top of that, while Violent Night is the only major new release this week,Top Gun: Maverickreturns to theaters for two weeks starting on Friday.
Nevertheless, Universal Pictures should be pleased atViolent Night’s potential performance given that it’s a new property. 2022 has been the year of small budgeted genre films likeSmile,Barbarian, andTerrifier 2being all great successes in their own respective runs. On top of this explosive momentum,Violent Nightlooks to feed off its great word of mouth. Moviegoers have been buzzing about this wacky and festive action comedy with many early screenings taking place across the country in the last couple of weeks. Review scores for the film have also been fairly positive withViolent Nightcurrently holding a 71% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
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Violent Nightis not for everyone given its brutal namesake, and the R-rating is going to limit its box office to some degree, but if you love modern action movies likeJohn Wickor alternative Christmas classics likeBlack Christmas, you’re going to have an amazing time with this holiday full of hilarious blunt force trauma. The action is incredible, the film is endlessly funny, Harbour is the perfect badass Santa, and the rest of the cast, which featuresJohn LeguizamoandChristmas Vacation’sBeverly D’Angelo,is simply delightful. Because of that, it is going to be exciting to see what kind of overall box office totalViolent Nightcan wish up for Christmas this year.
Violent Nightis crashing down the chimney to theaters on December 2. While we wait for this combat friendly, beer loving, Santa to come to town, you can watch the film’s merry and bright kill happy trailer down below.
