Longlegs box office: How much money it made and the “nuts” marketing that earned it

Longlegs’ impressive box office is a positive sign for horror’s hold on mid-budget filmmaking and a big win for studio Neon.

It’s not as if the genre desperately needed a savior; kids’ fare and horror movies have gone from strength to strength during a string of challenging years for theaters post-COVID-19.

The beauty of horror flicks in this area is that they’re typically inexpensive. A healthy return on investment is much easier to achieve than with tentpole new movies with bloated budgets.

While they rarely appear on highest-grossing movie lists at the end of their release years, films like Longlegs keep mid-budget cinema alive. And, positive reviews for Oz Perkins’ serial killer story have helped make it a sleeper hit.

Longlegs box office so far

Longlegs opened with $22.6 million at the US box office.

It was released in the US on July 12, 2024, beating Fly Me to the Moon’s competition.

Before that, Longlegs raked in $3 million from Thursday previews.

How it compares to other Neon releases

Longlegs broke Neon’s Thursday previews record and was the distributor’s biggest US opening weekend to date.

Neon

The Longlegs release set two records for Neon in the US after pulling in impressive Thursday preview sales as well as a successful opening weekend.

Neon commented in a press release, “Not since The Blair Witch Project launched 25 years ago on the same weekend in July has there been an independent genre film that out-projected, out-performed and over-indexed so wildly that it seemed to the industry it ‘came out of nowhere.’”

Longlegs will not reach the global box office heights of Neon’s shiniest project, Parasite, but it’s climbing the distributor’s all-time chart nonetheless.

It’s important to consider films within the context of their budget, age rating, and audience reach. In its weight class, Longlegs is a big hitter. It’s currently tracking to surpass the likes of Immaculate and Triangle of Sadness.

Top 10 worldwide box office for Neon movies:

1. Parasite: $253,267,858
2. I, Tonya: $53,797,409
3. Ferrari: $40,712,490
4. Triangle of Sadness: $32,890,983
5. Immaculate: $24,379,943
6. Longlegs: $22,646,980
7. Anatomy of a Fall: $22,030,607
8. Spencer: $16,546,858
9. Perfect Days: $16,389,042
10. Moonage Daydream: $13,910,491

The movie’s budget

Deadline reported that the production came in at under $10 million and marketing was in the “high single digits.”

NEON

The two big components in the cost of making a film are the production itself and then the advertising and distribution. Longlegs’ budget was low enough that marketing it cost almost as much as making it.

With this in mind, Longlegs has already broken even, and should go on to make a very decent profit if it keeps on riding the hype train.

The smart campaign that catapulted Longlegs’ box office

Neon ran a clever and creepy marketing campaign that relied on obfuscating the film’s serial killer (Nicolas Cage).

Generally, when things are teased or hidden it only makes people more curious. There’s nothing scarier than the unknown and what we imagine is lurking in it.

Neon’s tactics included a trailer that hid Cage’s character, leaning into the reactions of other characters seeing him, and a terrifying recording of actor Maika Monroe’s heart rate when she first saw Cage in character.

The film also dared fans to call a number on a billboard.

If Barbie (and Barbenheimer) proved anything, it’s that savvy promotion can still work wonders. Since the streaming boom, memorable campaigns seem to be fewer and far between, but the right viral materials aimed at the relevant audience can still be a path to success.

For more, see the best Neon horror movies to watch before Longlegs, is Longlegs based on a true story, and find out how to watch Longlegs. Or, read why Immaculate had the best horror movie marketing in years.