It’s hard to deny that the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the landscape for various films to earn top-dollar and with the American box office struggling over the last year, you can’t blame movie fans for getting excited about the small victories concerning the box office slowly coming back to life. This weekend saw A Quiet Place Part II have an exceptional weekend at the box office despite all that and illustrates that appointment viewing is still key to getting asses in seats.

Following the deadly events at home, the Abbott family must now face the terrors of the outside world as they continue their fight for survival in silence. Forced to venture into the unknown, they quickly realize that the creatures that hunt by sound are not the only threats that lurk beyond the sand path.

The John Krasinski-directed horror sequel was able to muster an estimated $57 million over four days, according to Variety. This gives A Quiet Place Part II the new pandemic era domestic opening weekend record surpassing Godzilla Vs. Kong’s five day opening total of $48.5 million. It’s release had been delayed a full year because of the pandemic.

For some comparison, A Quiet Place opened to $50.2 million in the summer of 2018 and went on to earn $341 million on a budget of $17 million. There is a good shot that the second film is able to cross the $300 million, if not earn the studio even more.

This box office performance with these two installments should help bolster John Krasinski’s directing career and ability to get original projects picked-up by studios in the future. Krasinski hasn’t given up on acting as he’s still playing Jack Ryan on the popular Amazon Prime Video series with Season 3 coming out sometime this year.

A third movie is already in the works with filmmaker Jeff Nichols (Mud, Midnight Special, Loving, Take Shelter) attached to write and direct it, as reported by Deadline last fall. Nichols had once been developing a feature film reboot of the sci-fi buddy cop film Alien Nation for 20th Century Fox before the merger with the Walt Disney company placed the project into limbo, he’s currently hoping to repackage Alien Nation as a series.

Disney also decided to release Emma Stone’s 101 Dalmatians prequel, Cruella, over the weekend using a hybrid model having it drop in both theaters and on Disney+’s Premier Access at the same time. Cruella was able to earn a projected $27 million for a solid second place spot given the Disney project was being marketed to an older audience, although, I’m sure Disney was hoping for a bigger turnout.

The other big movies coming this summer include F9, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, In The Heights, Black Widow, Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins, Space Jam: Legacy, Jungle Cruise, The Green Knight, Free Guy, The Suicide Squad, and Candyman.

SOURCE: VARIETY