Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn in ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’

Paramount Pictures

Paramount’s prequel A Quiet Place: Day One is in a closer-than-expected race with Pixar’s reigning champ Inside Out 2 for the weekend box office crown, while Kevin Costner‘s pricey Western Horizon: An American Saga is being left in the dust

The third A Quiet Place movie won Friday with an estimated $22.5 million, putting it on course for a domestic debut of $53 million to $55 million, the best of the franchise for a three-day number. Heading into the weekend, the sci-fi horror thriller was tracking to open to $40 million-plus, considering franchise creator John Krasinski didn’t direct this time; nor did Emily Blunt star.

Instead, Michael Sarnoski (Pig) was brought on to helm Day One, based on a story he and Krasinski came up with together. Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn star in the $70 million pic, which boasts generally strong reviews and a B+ CinemaScore, a good grade for a horror pic. The 18-to-24 crowd is fueling the film, along with an ethnically diverse audience. It also took over many Imax and premium large-format screens from Inside Out 2, which is now in its third weekend.

The Krasinski-directed A Quiet Place was a sleeper hit at the 2018 box office, opening to $50 million despite virtually no dialogue. A Quiet Place: Part II, hitting theaters over Memorial Day in 2021 as the box office was still in recovery mode from the pandemic, posted a four-day holiday gross of $57 million, including $47 million for the three-day weekend.

Day One continues the June box office rebound begun by Bad Boys: Ride or Die and cemented by Pixar and Disney’s blockbuster Inside Out 2, which is on the verge of becoming the first film since Barbie nearly a year ago to clear the $1 billion mark at the global box office. It’s already one of the top 10 grossing animated films of all time, not adjusted for inflation.

Inside Out 2 grossed an estimated $17 million on Friday for a weekend haul in the $55 million to $59 million range.

The outlook for Kevin Costner’s pricey $100 million Western, Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter One isn’t so good. The film earned an estimated $4 million on Friday for a projected opening of $11 million.

Horizon is without a doubt the biggest curiosity factor of the weekend, considering Costner left behind a lucrative gig on Taylor Sheridan’s hit show Yellowstone and put up tens of millions of his own money to make his decades-long passion project a reality with four, period Western movies.

Horizon‘s projected $11 million opening is a worrisome start for a three-hour movie costing $100 million to produce. Many box office pundits still believe the movie will catch on in America’s heartland, although a B- CinemaScore and meh reviews won’t help its cause.

Warners agreed to distribute and market the movie for a fee in the U.S. Costner — who has tirelessly promoted the movie — invested $38 million of his own money and paid for most of the marketing, while two mystery investors also ponied up equity. The rest of the budget came from selling off foreign rights with the help of sales outfit K5 International, which premiered the film at the Cannes Film Festival. (Horizon opens in numerous markets this weekend.)

Horizon: An American Saga: Chapter Two opens in short order, on Aug. 16, in one of the more unusual distribution schemes in Hollywood history.