New here? Start with this

Insidious: Out of the Further is the sixth film in a long-running supernatural horror franchise made by Screen Gems, Stage 6 Films and Blumhouse Atomic Monster, and distributed by Sony Pictures. The series is known for stories about people who can travel into a spirit world, and this instalment centres on a young mother with the ability to bring ghosts back with her into the real world. It stars Amelia Eve, Brandon Perea and Lin Shaye, and is directed by Jacob Chase.

Box office previews, ticket sales from screenings the night before a film's official opening, are widely used in the film industry as an early gauge of how a release is likely to perform over its opening weekend. Comparisons are often drawn with the franchise's previous entry, 2023's Insidious: The Red Door, which went on to take $189 million worldwide. This new film also arrives in a crowded market, opening the same weekend as Spider-Man: Brand New Day, one of the year's biggest blockbusters, and alongside another new release, Jason Statham's Mutiny.

The story matters largely for what it says about the state of the cinema business: whether a well-known horror franchise can still draw sizeable audiences when going up against a dominant superhero blockbuster, and how smaller and mid-budget films are faring more generally at the North American box office.