Scared to Death opened to a startlingly weak box office showing, earning just $21, 550 from 184 theaters and posting a record-low per-screen average for a new release.
Box Office Record: Lowest Per-Screen Average
Box Office Mojo’s chart places Scared to Death at No. 37 on the domestic chart for the weekend of March 13, with a debut per-screen average of $117 — the lowest ever recorded for a new release. That figure breaks the previous new-release low of $125, set by Jimmy and Stiggs in 2025. Overall, Scared to Death ranks as the eighth-worst debut per-screen average of all time when re-releases are included.
How the Debut Compares With Other Low Openings
The film’s performance falls behind seven re-releases that registered even lower per-screen averages: Groundhog Day in 2021 ($100), Frozen in 2020 ($87), The Star in 2019 ($69), On the Basis of Sex in 2020 ($67), The 40-Year-Old Virgin in 2025 ($43), RBG in 2020 ($38), and Trainwreck in 2025 ($16). With Scared to Death joining the list, the children’s flop The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure has been pushed out of the all-time Bottom 10; that title had held a per-screen average of $205 from its 2012 debut.
Limited Release, Genre Cast and What Comes Next
Scared to Death is a horror-comedy about a production assistant who suggests performing a real séance on set, with disastrous results. The cast includes Olivier Paris in the lead, alongside genre veterans Lin Shaye and Bill Moseley and actress Rae Dawn Chong. The movie opened in a limited release on Oscars weekend, a timing that typically depresses box office when many viewers remain home for the telecast.
Because the film’s theatrical box office was so small, its overall fate is likely to be decided by streaming and VOD performance rather than ticket sales. The limited release and timing mean this opening weekend may understate the title’s future audience on digital platforms.
For now, the debut stands as a notable statistical outlier: a new-release low in per-screen average that joins a recent trend of unpredictable and occasionally record-setting openings for 2020s releases.
