Get Out

We all knew Get Out was one of the best success stories of the year, but did you know it is actually, as of now, THE most successful movie to open in 2017? Jordan Peele’s sharp study of modern racism disguised as a horror flick is the most profitable movie of the year, with a return on investment of 630 percent.

The staff of ScreenCrush picks the ten best movies of the first half of the year - did your favorite make the cut?

Jordan Peele astounded audiences and studios alike with his directorial debut Get Out, and, unsurprisingly, has gotten himself another, way bigger deal with Universal Pictures. His next film has no title and no plot (that we know of) yet, but it does finally have a release date — and we won’t have to wait that long: Universal announced that Peele’s next movie will hit theaters March 15, 2019.

Considering the fact that Jordan Peele began working on Get Out in a different political climate – at the start of the Obama administration – it only makes sense that the filmmaker had multiple alternate endings under his sleeve. Back in March, Peele stopped by BuzzFeed’s Another Round podcast to chat about the evolution of the film as it changed to keep up with and properly reflect the political times. He also revealed that he initially had several alternate endings to the hit horror comedy, all of which were much darker than what happens to Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) in the film’s final moments. We already know one of those endings, but now Peele’s revealed details of a second.

Stranger Things may have moved from the Upside Down to whatever nightmare-scape populates Season 2, but leave it to Sunday’s MTV Movie Awards to combine two of the biggest sunken places of recent memory. Get Out meets Stranger Things in a new star-studded parody from the 2017 MTV Movie and TV Awards, and no tree is safe.

Since Dennis Miller hosted the very first MTV Movie Awards back in 1992, the music channel’s annual award ceremony has been something of a fun dalliance into a world where the artistic merit of a movie is less important than its popular clout. This year marks a couple of big changes for the format: not only did the award show change its official name  —  it is now known as the MTV Movie & TV Awards  —  it also has become arguably the most inclusive award show to date, honoring titles like Moonlight, Get Out, and Jane the Virgin alongside its stalwart categories like Best Kiss and Best Villain.

Who knew that a low-budget horror film from a first time filmmaker would become such a major, record-breaking hit. Jordan Peele‘s Get Out, made for a mere $4.5 million, now rests at fifth place in the 2017 box office earning $172 million. The horror film, which had a near-perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes, has shattered a couple of records. It’s the highest grossing film from a black director, and also holds the honor of the (oddly-specific) record as the highest grossing directorial debut from an original script. Get Out is Universal’s second biggest film of the year following The Fate of the Furious, so it’s no surprise the studio is eager to get back to work with the filmmaker.

However, its reign at the top will likely be brief.

Distinction is all relative. Sure, maybe Jordan Peele’s blockbuster horror film Get Out isn’t the highest-grossing movie of the year. And maybe it’s not the highest-grossing horror movie of all time. And maybe it’s not the highest-grossing directorial debut ever, or the highest-grossing February release ever, or the highest-grossing film from a black director. But gosh darnit, Get Out is too widely liked to pass through a theatrical run without setting some kind of record, so the showbiz bookkeepers of the internet did some research and found a title that they could rightly pin on Peele’s project.

It might be a tale as old as time, but audiences have proven there’s still a few petals left on that old flower. Despite being projected to open at somewhere between $214–245 million worldwide, Beauty and the Beast knocked the pants off those projections, eclipsing $350 million at the international box office and setting a March record for domestic releases along the way. Let’s take a look at how things shook out this past weekend with some of the expected grosses.