In a history-making move, the uber-gruesome indie slasher pic Terrifier 3 took out a Hollywood institution in one fell swoop — the movie ratings system.

Filmmaker Damien Leone’s threequel stunned the town when opening to $18.9 million over the Oct. 11-13 weekend despite being unrated. Before the pandemic, few movie theaters would book a title that didn’t have a rating, because of strict limits on TV advertising, among other things. But times have changed, and Terrifier 3 was able to secure a berth in 2,513 cinemas.

Now, it is well on its way to becoming the top-grossing unrated film of all time domestically against a minuscule budget of $2 million and barely any marketing spend on the part of Chris McGurk’s Cineverse Corp., which released the movie.

Between COVID and the historic 2023 labor strikes, the box office calendar is still in an agitated state of flux, and most exhibitors weren’t going to refuse to play what they knew was a sure bet, particularly after Joker: Folie à Deux crashed and burned a week prior. “Terrifier 3 was the movie fanboys wanted Joker to be,” says one top studio marketer of the films, which both center on villainous clowns.

It’s also the second unrated film to open to No. 1 after Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé, which debuted to $21.8 million in early December 2023 on its way to topping out at $33.9 million domestically. It didn’t have time to go through the ratings process, but it was a concert doc, and people — particularly parents — knew what to expect.

Terrifier 3 had plenty of time, but it didn’t even try to get a rating, meaning it didn’t have to comply with any rules laid out by the Classification and Rating Administration (CARA), which administers the voluntary ratings system on behalf of the Motion Picture Association and the National Association of Theater Owners. And had it been submitted, it risked receiving an NC-17 rating, meaning that no one 17 or younger could buy a ticket, period.

The Hollywood Reporter has learned that theaters carrying the film, including the three biggest circuits (AMC, Cinemark and Regal) are treating Terrifier 3 as if it were an R-rated film, and trying to turn away anyone who is 17 or younger if they aren’t accompanied by a parent or guardian. Two distribution sources noted over the weekend that DreamWorks Animation and Universal’s The Wild Robot saw a noticeable bump, and speculate that teenagers and tweens bought tickets to that film and then snuck into Terrifier 3. The same trend continued on Monday’s Indigenous Peoples Day holiday.

“The scary part is that we’ve seen a lot of screenshots of people bringing their kids to the movie,” notes another source of the film, which pushes the boundaries to excess, including starting off with a child being murdered off-screen and a scene of genital mutilation.

The four major Hollywood movie studios — Disney, Paramount, Sony and Warner Bros. — could never pull off what Cineverse accomplished. As members of the MPA, they must submit their films to the ratings board (Amazon MGM Studios and Netfilx are also members.) If a film is submitted to CARA but ultimately decides to go out unrated, it still has to adhere to CARA’s advertising rules, which prohibit a broadcaster from carrying an ad for an unrated film and limit trailer play.

In the early 2000s, Hollywood studios and the voluntary ratings system were called out by Congress after a blistering report issued by the Federal Trade Commission concluded that some studios were actively promoting R-rated films to youngsters. Then MPA-chief Jack Valenti, alongside NATO, updated the ratings system as a way of appeasing lawmakers, including providing additional descriptors as to why a movie received the rating it did. The marketing rules were also tightened.

Cineverse is primarily a digital, marketing and brand content venture. It has more than 30 streaming channels that attracts 80 million monthly viewers. McGurk, a Hollywood studio veteran, says the company is now upping its theatrical presence. He says only $500,000 was spent to market Terrifier 3 because of the company’s vast footprint in the horror space, including Bloody Disgusting, a go-to website for horror fanatics. On top of its streaming channels, Cinverse has a network of 40 podcasts. All told, the promotion on Cinveverse’s properties likely equaled $5 million to $10 million in media value, McGurk estimates. The company released two trailers, one “nice” and one “naughty” (the former was a red-band trailer). Most exhibitors opted for the nice, or green-band trailer.

McGurk estimates he has been involved in the release of 500 films over his career, but he has never seen anything like this.

“I’ve never had a movie where the actual out-of-pocket marketing spend to box office has been this ratio. It’s just off the charts, McGurk says, crediting the success to “a different approach to finding an audience, and leveraging everything except national media.”

The ultra low-budget first Terrifier did not get a theatrical launch, but 2022’s Terrifier 2 did. However, it debuted in far fewer locations than the threequel, or 770 cinemas. And many locations only provided one showtime in the evening and refused to play it on Sundays.

McGurk said he expected the $250,000 budgeted Terrifier 2 to be a one-weekend event and then go quickly to digital, but its run was extended based on demand. It ultimately played in more than 1,500 theaters and grossed $10 million domestically, which more than justified the heftier $2 million budget for the threequel.

“We didn’t a have a problem getting the screens we got this time,” says McGurk. Exhibitors knew the film was going to do business based on advance ticket sales, social media trends and tracking. “We knew it was going to do well, but we didn’t imagine it was going to do this,” he adds. “You’re dealing an unknown animal, because people hadn’t seen an unrated movie tracking like this.”

The exec believes Terrifier 3, set at Christmas, will play through the year-end holiday and is plotting a special Christmas Eve event.

The film ends on a cliffhanger, and filmmaker Leone has spoken about wanting to keep the franchise going.

McGurk, who declined to comment on any plans for a fourth Terrifier movie, notes that it very much feels like a movie for the anxieties of these times: “There’s something about the environment in the world right now with all the war going on and the confusion about the election. Horror movies generally do really well in times like this because people want to go and just escape from everything.”