While December will be dominated by the return of Avatar, Violent Night is here to spread some bloody Christmas cheer in the meantime. The action-comedy just hit theaters with the film, which stars Stranger ThingsDavid Harbour as a brutal Santa, making $1.1 million in Thursday previews in 3,000 cinemas across the United States.

This is great news for the festive film which only took $20 million to make. It was reported earlier in the week that Violent Night would make roughly $10 million in its opening weekend. While it's still more likely it will be closer to that number, this gives the film a chance to hit something closer to the $15 million mark. That still won’t be enough for first place at the box office as Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is expected to make another $25 million in its fourth weekend of release.

However, nevertheless, Universal should be very jolly about Violent Night’s hot coco start. For one, the box office is in desperate need of a Christmas film this holiday season. Most of the Christmas-centric films have gone straight to streaming once again this year, but that only benefits Violent Night. Despite its R-rating, it's the only major Christmas film coming to theaters this season. That might be why the preview numbers are so positive, but the reviews and word of mouth have been glowing as well. Universal was very confident in the film they had to the point where they were holding early screenings two weeks before Violent Night’s official wide release. That’s rare in today’s world.

violent night
Image via Universal Pictures

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Universal deserves a lot of credit for how brilliantly they marketed this wacky hard edge Santa tale, but it also helped that Violent Night is a bona fide Christmas classic. Like Black Christmas, Batman Returns, and Die Hard before it, this takes what a Christmas film can be and turns it completely on its head. This is basically John Wick with Santa Claus. It has all the blood-soaked gleeful madness you come to expect from those films with all the heart you expect from a timeless classic like Home Alone or Miracle on 34th Street. The action is spectacular, the gore is fantastic, the direction is sharper than a broken candy cane, and the cast is endlessly delightful. Harbour makes the perfect rated-R Santa and commits to all the insanely fun sleigh riding action while John Leguizamo eats all the milk dipped cookies for one memorably Scrooge-like villain.

While we wait for the official weekend box office numbers to be released, this is a new holiday classic that needs to be seen in theaters to be believed and so far moviegoers are responding to this uniquely action-packed Santa. So run, run, Rudolph to your local theater to see Violent Night now. The trailer for the film can be seen down below.