Horror has always been a low risk and high reward enterprise for Hollywood, but there are a couple of properties in particular that have taken that sentiment and sprinted away with it. Based on nothing but its cost-to-earning ratio, Insidious is without a doubt one of the most profitable franchises there’s ever been.
Sure, the quality may have wildly varied from the series-high 66 percent Rotten Tomatoes approval rating of the original through to the middling 38 percent of longtime star Patrick Wilson’s feature-length directorial debut The Red Door, but it’s right there in the box office numbers that audiences can’t get enough.
Made for shoestring budgets, the five installments so far have only set their investors back $42 million, but the profit margins are borderline preposterous. After The Red Door scored the biggest take yet with $188 million, Insidious has brought in a mammoth $730 million in ticket sales, so there’s every reason to expect the production line is set to keep on rolling.
Thanks to distributor Sony’s exclusive first-look deal with Netflix, subscribers have been patiently biding their time waiting to discover when the next supernatural chiller would make its way to the platform, and those prayers have now been officially answered after the streaming service listed a Nov. 4 arrival for the critical dud but commercial phenomenon.
Disappointingly a little late for Halloween, based on the brand’s enduring popularity, you can bet that The Red Door will waste no time at all becoming one of the biggest movies on Netflix as soon as it lands.