Bill Skarsgård’s Boy Kills World Struggles to Crack Top-10 Box Office, 45-Year-Old Horror Film Crashes Party

“In space, no one can hear you scream” never sounded so good, if one is a fan of 1979’s Alien. Director Ridley Scott’s classic sci-fi horror film is currently celebrating its 45th anniversary with a special rerelease in movie theaters. Plus, adding insult to injury, Alien is actually outpacing and outperforming Bill Skarsgård’s new movie, Boy Kills World, at the box office. If the estimates hold up, Alien could keep director Moritz Mohr’s new release from cracking the Top 10 over the weekend.

Boy Kills World is predicted to make around $1.6 million (per Deadline) over its first three days of theatrical release domestically. With that low of a number, Boy Kills World likely won’t perform well enough to even crack the Top 10. However, it gets worse for Skarsgård’s latest big-screen adventure. At the time of this writing, the 45th anniversary screening of Alien is on pace to make $1.78 million, which could ensure Boy Kills World doesn’t earn a Top-10 finish.

Boy Kills World

3.5/5

Boy Kills World is an action thriller film by director Moritz Mohr, released in 2024. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, a young man simply known as “Boy” lives through terrible trauma after his family is killed by a woman named Hilda Van Der Koy, who currently rules the land. Now older and more bloodthirsty than ever, Boy heads into the fray to claim revenge while liberating the world from her tyrannical grasp.

Release Date

April 26, 2024

Director

Moritz Mohr

Runtime

115 Minutes

Writers

Tyler Burton Smith , Arend Remmers , Moritz Mohr

Part of Boy Kills World’s problem is that the revenge film isn’t scoring all that well with critics and audiences. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie’s audience score currently sits at 70%, while it only registers 61% on the Tomatometer. And then there’s Boy Kills World’s “B-” CinemaScore. A “B-” score isn’t necessarily a death sentence, but judging from the financial estimates, Boy Kills World won’t have enough going for it to leapfrog Alien to land a lily pad in the Top 10.

Boy Kills World Producer Says ‘People Either Love or Hate’ Film

Boy Kills World’s baddies “rule with an iron fist” in the film. However, if the estimates don’t improve drastically across Saturday evening and Sunday morning, Bill Skarsgård’s revenge flick won’t even garner a Top-10 finish during its first weekend. And before the Alien vs. Boy Kills World dialogue even began, producer Alex Lebovici admitted his new movie isn’t for everyone. Lebovici said in an interview with Deadline:

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Alex Lebovici of Hammerstone Studios discussed Jon Benjamin voicing Bill Skarsgård in Boy Kills World and Sam Raimi’s contributions.

Clearly, it is too soon to try and lump Boy Kills World into the category of a cult classic, particularly when it is struggling mightily at the box office. Before Boy Kills World can join the ranks of a successful midnight movie like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which is closing in on its 50th anniversary, Skarsgård’s new film needs to find an audience — and it just hasn’t yet, judging from the Rotten Tomatoes ratings and CinemaScore it’s posting.