With the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score in the 30-year history of the franchise, Scream 7 wasn’t a triumphant return for Ghostface from a critical perspective. Commercially, however, is a different story. Scream 7 wasted no time in becoming a box office hit, breaking a series record with its $63.6 million domestic opening. Though it remains to be seen how the film holds in subsequent weekends as new titles arrive in March, the strong start put Scream 7 in excellent position to turn a profit. After less than a week in theaters, the sequel has crossed a significant box office milestone.
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As of this writing, Scream 7‘s worldwide total stands at $104.4 million (via Box Office Mojo). It’s easily 2026’s highest-grossing horror movie to date, beating out Sam Raimi’s Send Help ($89.3 million) and nearly doubling the gross of the critically acclaimed 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple ($57.8 million). Scream 7 is the sixth installment in the franchise to pass $100 million globally.
Can Scream 7 Become the Franchise’s Highest-Grossing Installment?
The highest-grossing Scream movie remains the 1996 original, which posted $173 million worldwide. As things currently stand, Scream 7 is approximately $68.6 million away from matching that. Whether it’s able to or not could depend on how strong its legs are. A record-breaking opening isn’t always indicative of a long box office run. Horror movies have a tendency to be front-loaded, capitalizing on the hype by doing most of their damage right away in the first weekend. The Scream 7 reviews could have a negative impact on the movie’s long-term box office prospects, though it’s worth mentioning they haven’t seemed to have any impact thus far. The Rotten Tomatoes audience score is 76%, implying fans are liking what they’ve seen.
One thing working in Scream 7‘s favor is the fact that it should have a monopoly over its target demographic. There might be some overlap with horror fans with The Bride!, which draws from Bride of Frankenstein, but that film looks to be a genre cocktail that has elements of romance and crime thriller as well. Scream 7 is the more “traditional” straight-up horror movie, so genre fans looking for a scare or two might be inclined to check it out. By now, Send Help has made most of its money and doesn’t pose much of a threat to Scream, and there aren’t any new major horror releases on the horizon until Ready or Not 2: Here I Come in a couple of weeks.
As a point of comparison, Scream VI opened with $67.1 million worldwide back in 2023 and ended its run with $166.5 million. Though it received much more positive reviews than Scream 7, the point about horror movies being front-loaded applies in this case. After a record opening, Scream VI dropped 61% in its second weekend and then another 51.9% in its third weekend. Despite that, it fell just $6.5 million shy of topping the original Scream‘s all-time franchise record. This is all to say, Scream 7‘s significantly larger debut gives it a nice head start over the other movies, so it isn’t inconceivable that it could make another $67 million over the rest of its run.
Even if Scream 7 doesn’t break a new record and only manages to top its two direct predecessors, Paramount will be quite pleased with that performance. Scream 7 was subject to a tumultuous development cycle that saw the filmmakers pivot to a new direction after the controversial firing of Melissa Barrera and the departure of Jenna Ortega. That it was able to overcome that adversity and become a hit illustrates why the studio is already putting the pieces together for Scream 8. Hopefully, the next film will be better received critically, but the franchise continues to be a box office powerhouse.
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Image courtesy of Tor Books/Macmillan -
Official art by Bastien Lecouffe-Deharme
