Late Night With the Devil Earns $666,666 at Sunday Box Office (No, Really)

Sometimes, reality is both stranger than fiction and also oddly fitting and that’s the case when it comes to the box office numbers for IFC’s Late Night with the Devil. The found footage horror film, which stars David Dastmalchian, Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss, and more, opened in theaters this weekend and while it came in sixth overall at the box office with $2.8 million, it’s the film’s Sunday box office that is of particular interest. Late Night With the Devil brought in $666,666 on Sunday. No, really. We’re not making that up.

Devilish Sunday numbers being what they are, the film’s $2.8 million opening makes it the biggest for distributor IFC, putting it ahead of 2022’s Watcher.

“This weekend’s release of Late Night With the Devil set fire to our old opening record,” Scott Shooman, head of AMC Networks Films said (via Variety). “[It] continues to showcase that there is still potential for highly reviewed, intelligent auteur films in movie theaters across all genres.”

What is Late Night With the Devil About?

Directed and written by Cameron and Colin Cairnes, Late Night With the Devil follows Jack Delroy (Dastmalchian), a late-night variety show host in the 1970s who, in an attempt to boost his show’s ratings, decides to do a special occultism-themed episode on Halloween featuring a young girl who had allegedly been possessed by Satan as a guest. Over the course of the episode, things go horribly awry for both Jack and his guests. The film is, at the time of this article’s writing is Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with a 96 percent rating from critics and is also doing well with audiences. Audiences presently have the film at an impressive 80 percent audience score.

David Dastmalchian Says His Character Inspiration Shares Ties With Heath Ledger’s Joker

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Dastmalchian revealed that to prepare for his role as talk show host Jack Delroy in Late Night With the Devil, the film’s directors sent him footage that ended up being of an Australian television host that is believed to have also been the inspiration for Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight — a film that Dastmalchian also appeared in.

“The Cairnes brothers sent me a bunch of footage that they accumulated of Don Lane. He was the Johnny Carson of Australian television,” Dastmalchian said. “He did this famous interview with Tom Waits, and a lot of people think Heath Ledger took inspiration from it for his portrayal of The Joker. [The likelihood of shared inspiration] is pretty cool, and it’s also the cyclical nature of being a storyteller and the strange path that it’s followed.”

Late Night With the Devil is in theaters now.

Have you seen Late Night With the Devil? What do you think about Late Night With the Devil’s oddly fitting Sunday box office numbers? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section.