A Nightmare on Elm Street Box Office: Latest Underperforming Hunk

A Nightmare on Elm Street remake with Kellan Lutz: The beefy Twilight Saga actor is the latest movie hunk to be seen in a key role in a – at best – middling domestic box office performer.

A Nightmare on Elm Street box office: Featuring The Twilight Saga’s Kellan Lutz as a studly potential victim, New Line Cinema’s remake opened far below expectations

April 30–May 2 weekend box office: Starring Academy Award nominee Jackie Earle Haley (Little Children, 2006) as Freddy Krueger, and featuring the The Twilight Saga’s Kellan Lutz as a potential victim, Warner Bros./New Line Cinema’s A Nightmare on Elm Street remake topped the North American (U.S. and Canada only) box office chart, grossing $32.9 million (including Thursday midnight screenings) according to final studio figures found at boxofficemojo.com.

The good news: That’s a solid figure – and $700,000 above the studio’s Sunday estimates.

The bad news: That’s also around $7 million below what several box office pundits had been predicting. After all, Marcus Nispel’s Friday the 13th reboot opened with $40.6 million in February 2009.

A Nightmare on Elm Street cast

Besides Jackie Earle Haley and Kellan Lutz, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010 also features Kyle Gallner, Rooney Mara, Thomas Dekker, Katie Cassidy, Clancy Brown, Connie Britton, and Lia D. Mortensen.

Samuel Bayer directed the critically lambasted horror thriller, which has a dismal 14 percent approval rating among Rotten Tomatoes’ “top critics.”

Budget: A reported $35 million (as always, not including marketing and distribution expenses).

Back to 1984

Directed by Wes Craven, the 1984 original had Robert Englund as the dream-crashing Freddy Krueger, in addition to Heather Langenkamp, Jsu Garcia (billed as Nick Corri), veteran John Saxon (The Reluctant Debutante, The Unforgiven), Oscar nominee Ronee Blakley (Nashville, 1975), and future mega-star Johnny Depp in his first big-screen role.

The low-budget horror flick cost a reported $1.1 million.

Far less impressive run than the original’s

Update: As it turned out, Samuel Bayer’s A Nightmare on Elm Street remake earned more than half of its final domestic take – $63.1 million – on its debut weekend. Internationally, the horror thriller collected $52.6 million. Worldwide total: $115.7 million.

These are hardly blockbuster figures, but the global cume should have been enough for the reboot to earn a modest profit at the box office and give birth to a cheapo sequel. Yet that didn’t come to pass.

For comparison’s sake: Despite its far bigger opening-weekend numbers, the 2009 Friday the 13th reboot reached a relatively disappointing cume of $65 million domestically – plus an even more underwhelming $26.5 million internationally. Worldwide total: $91.5 million.

Also worth noting: A Nightmare on Elm Street 1984 raked in $25.5 million domestically – or about $60 million in 2010. (International figures are hard to come by.)

For the record, the 2010 remake’s top international markets were Russia/CIS ($5.7 million), the United Kingdom/Ireland ($5.1 million), Mexico ($4.8 million), Spain ($4.2 million), and France ($4 million).

As for spring hunk Kellan Lutz, he had far better box office luck with David Slade’s summer blockbuster The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010 with Kellan Lutz: Two years ago, the Twilight Saga’s Emmett Cullen was featured in a remake of another 1980s horror “classic,” Prom Night, starring Brittany Snow.

Early spring box office: Muscular hunks abound, but their movies’ domestic figures have been on the flabby side

A curious aside: The spring season in the Northern Hemisphere is near its halfway point. That means Hollywood’s official summer blockbuster season – which runs from the United States’ Memorial Day weekend (late May) to the Labor Day weekend (early September in the U.S.) – is about to begin.

So far, one noticeable pattern is that disparate movies featuring handsome, hunky guys – not infrequently shirtless or in tight clothing – have underperformed in the domestic market.

Besides the aforementioned Kellan Lutz in A Nightmare on Elm Street, here are a few examples:

• Alex O’Loughlin in the romantic comedy The Back-up Plan (weekend debut: $12.2 million).
• Aaron Johnson in the superhero parody Kick-Ass (weekend debut: $19.8 million).
• Sam Worthington in the fantasy adventure Clash of the Titans (weekend debut: $61.2 million; a disappointment in relation to its cost).
• Liam Hemsworth in the romantic melodrama The Last Song (First five days [Wed.–Sun.]: $25.4 million).

Top Five movies: Summit’s Furry Vengeance bombs

Rounding out the Top Five movies on this past weekend’s domestic box office chart were:

• At no. 2, Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois’ computer-animated fantasy adventure How to Train Your Dragon grossed $10.6 million (down 31 percent on its sixth weekend). Domestic cume: $192.2 million. Voice cast: Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, and America Ferrera.
• At no. 3, Shawn Levy’s crime comedy Date Night grossed $7.6 million (down 28 percent on its fourth weekend). Domestic cume: $73.6 million. Cast: Steve Carell and Tina Fey.
• At no. 4, Alan Poul’s romantic comedy The Back-up Plan grossed $7.3 million (down 41 percent on its second weekend). Domestic cume: $23 million. Cast: Jennifer Lopez and Alex O’Loughlin.
• At no. 5, Roger Kumble’s environmentally conscious comedy Furry Vengeance debuted with a paltry $6.6 million from 2,997 venues. Cast: Brendan Fraser, Brooke Shields, and Ken Jeong. Distributor: Summit Entertainment. Budget: $35 million.

Despite its relatively modest price tag, Furry Vengeance – the story of a real estate developer (Brendan Fraser) saddled with the task of turning a forest into a residential development, much to the fury of the local denizens – has turned out to be a box office dud.

Not helping matters, Furry Vengeance has a disastrous 13 percent approval rating among Rotten Tomatoes’ “top critics.”

“A Nightmare on Elm Street Box Office” endnotes

Unless otherwise noted, “A Nightmare on Elm Street Box Office: Latest Underperforming Hunk” box office information via Box Office Mojo. Budget info – which should be taken with a grain of salt – via BOM and/or other sources (e.g., the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Screen Daily, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Deadline.com, etc.).

Comments about the A Nightmare on Elm Street remake, Furry Vengeance, and other titles being hits/profitable or flops/money-losers at the box office (see paragraph below) are based on the available data about their production budget, additional marketing and distribution expenses (as a general rule of thumb, around 50 percent of the production cost), and worldwide gross (as a general rule of thumb when it comes to the Hollywood studios, around 50–55 percent of the domestic gross and 40 percent of the international gross goes to the distributing/producing companies).

Bear in mind that data regarding rebates, domestic/international sales/pre-sales, and other credits and/or contractual details that help to alleviate/split production costs and apportion revenues are oftentimes unavailable, and that reported international grosses may be incomplete (i.e., not every territory is fully – or even partially – accounted for).

Also bear in mind that ancillary revenues (domestic/global television rights, home video sales, streaming, merchandising, etc.) can represent anywhere between 40–70 percent of a movie’s total take. However, these revenues and their apportionment are only infrequently made public.

Lastly, although a more accurate reflection of a film’s popularity (i.e., its number of tickets sold), inflation-adjusted estimates should be taken with extreme caution. For instance, they’re based on average domestic ticket prices (via the National Association of Theater Owners, unless otherwise noted) whereas numerous major releases scored a large chunk of their box office take at top-priced venues.

Kellan Lutz A Nightmare on Elm Street remake images: New Line Cinema | Warner Bros.

“A Nightmare on Elm Street Box Office: Latest Underperforming Hunk” last updated in February 2023.