While A Quiet Place 2 has been both a critical and financial hit since it released earlier this month, it's no longer at the top of the box office charts. That honor belongs to The Conjuring 3, which released in movie theaters and on HBO Max this past Friday.

A Quiet Place 2 and The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It have combined to help the horror genre overtake the month of May when it comes to a  full-fledged return to theaters. As COVID-19 numbers go down and vaccination numbers go up, it appears more moviegoers in the United States are showing interest in watching movies outside their homes. That's good news for both films, which represent the continuations of popular franchises. However, it was better news for Conjuring 3, in no small part because it's the newest of the two by at least a few weeks.

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Deadline reported that The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It opened its first weekend at the box office with $24 million. The film, which continues to dramatize the "real life" cases of Ed and Lorraine Warren is actually the sixth film in the larger horror movie series. As Deadline pointed out, the strong opening weekend shows that audiences are still quite interested in seeing the pair, played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, investigate even more paranormal occurrences. The same can be said of Emily Blunt and the Abbott family fighting off aliens in A Quiet Place 2.

The Conjuring 3

While studios generally don't want to release two movies of the same genre so close together for fear of one cannibalizing the other, it appears there was no real danger of that happening this time around. A Quiet Place 2 might have been beaten out by The Conjuring 3, but it still had a solid second weekend, taking in another $19.5 million.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is the largest opening for an R-rated movie and the third-largest overall over the course of the pandemic. That's especially impressive considering the film also launched day-and-date on HBO Max.

A Quiet Place 2 didn't have the same limitations in that it wasn't competing against people who might decide to stay home and watch Conjuring 3 with no additional charge if they were already subscribers of HBO Max. It appears the demon possession-centric film's success shows that movie audiences are more than willing to go to the theaters and get out of the house.

A Quiet Place Part II is now playing in theaters and The Conjuring 3 is also available on HBO Max.

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Source: Deadline