Buddy's surprise box office success is a win for horror and indie filmmaking

There's a long history of Sundance Midnight features becoming cultural touchstones and important to the horror genre. These include The Blair Witch Project, The Babadook, Hereditary, among others.

Buddy, the directorial debut by Casper Kelly, played this year's prestigious Sundance Midnight section, and it was talked about as a movie that was likely to get picked up by a major distributor. However, that didn't happen. The film didn't land with a company like NEON, Blumhouse, or A24. It did, however, get scooped up by Roadside Attractions and Saban Films.

It turns out Roadside and Saban made a wise choice because Buddy just blew past its opening weekend expectations. The film grossed $5.36 million on only 1,258 screens. Initial tracking expected the film to gross only half that. It earned the sixth spot at the domestic box office to become Roadside Attractions' top opening since Covid and their second-best ever after I Can Only Imagine, which opened to $17 million in 2018. This is also Roadside's first major horror film, but you can bet it won't be their last. Additionally, Buddy's domestic opening marks the highest opening weekend of 2026 for films released on under 1,800 screens, according to Deadline.

What is Buddy about and how was it marketed?

The R-rated Buddy is inspired by 90s television shows for kids. Think Barney or The Teletubbies. In this case, the star is Buddy, voiced by Keegan-Michael Key. He's a giant, orange unicorn that turns bad. The film blends genres, including horror, surrealism, and comedy.

What's also impressive about the film is the creative marketing campaign that likely led to its box office success thus far. The marketing plan included a Buddy persona. He responded to texts and social media, which drew in fans. The persona now has over 450,000 followers and over 150 million views. Additionally, there's a Buddy Fan Club, which already amassed over 25,000 members who signed up via text. Additionally, the marketing campaign included three viral teasers, but no full trailer. Buddy was also seen at San Diego Comic Con, and he even got arrested in Times Square. It's likely that future filmmakers and distribution and marketing companies will study Buddy's campaign as a way to get an indie film in the public's eye.

The distributors told Deadline that they were surprised no major company scooped up Buddy after Sundance. "We expected the film to sell immediately to a major studio at Sundance, so when it didn't, it presented an amazing opportunity for Roadside and Saban to pick it up," said Howard Cohen and Eric d'Arbeloff of Roadside and Jonathan Saba and Shanan Becker of Saban. They added that they found the movie to be "an unusual mixture of horror, comedy, and emotion taking place in different realities that was both delightfully unique and marketable."

They also said that so far, Buddy's audiences are skewing 83 percent under 35, and the movie is over-indexing with Hispanic audiences by 37 percent.

Buddy is part of a really exciting broader trend this year of indie horror movies doing extremely well at the box office. The biggest example is Obsession, which was shot for under $1 million and has gone on to gross over $500 million so far. There are plenty of other success stories this year too, including A24's Backrooms, though that movie had a budget of about $10 million, and Markiplier's Iron Lung, which he financed and distributed himself.

What Buddy and these other movies prove is that audiences are hungry for new and inventive stories. Beyond that, Buddy is now a feel-good story, a movie that was passed over at film festivals but eventually found distributors who believed in it, developed an inventive marketing campaign, and now see it thriving.

Catch Buddy in theaters.

https://youtu.be/O1fNEHX9tSM