The most quoted threat in modern Blumhouse horror is now doing marketing duty in Canada. Netflix’s Canadian account announced that Ma, Tate Taylor’s 2019 thriller starring Octavia Spencer, has landed on the service — and reached for the movie’s signature line as its caption: “don’t make me drink alone tonight.”
Spencer’s Sue Ann Ellington — a lonely veterinary technician in small-town Ohio who buys beer for a pack of teenagers and then lets them drink in her basement — has turned out to be one of the studio’s most durable creations. Blumhouse made Ma for a reported $5 million. It returned $61.2 million worldwide, and six years on it is still working: a sequel is in development with Spencer attached.
The film opened May 31, 2019, on a weekend already crowded by Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Rocketman. It debuted to $18.4 million domestically, landing fourth, and closed with $45.9 million in the U.S. and Canada plus $15.3 million overseas. Domestic home video added another $3.1 million.
What kept the movie alive was the performance. Spencer plays Ma as genuinely wounded before she turns violent, a woman nursing a high-school humiliation that involves one of her teenage guests’ fathers, played by Luke Evans. The cast also includes Juliette Lewis, Diana Silvers, Missi Pyle, McKaley Miller, Corey Fogelmanis and Dante Brown. Scotty Landes wrote the screenplay.
Ma 2 is already in development, six years after the first film
The project reunites Spencer with Taylor, who directed her Oscar-winning turn in The Help. Blumhouse founder Jason Blum confirmed the follow-up at the company’s Business of Fear symposium, telling the room, “Ma likes to say ‘don’t make me drink alone,’ so we’re thrilled Octavia will join us again for a second round.” No director or release date has been announced, and Spencer has since offered updates on the script.
Spencer has clearly enjoyed the film’s second life. When Regina Hall donned the Ma wig for a gag in the new Scary Movie, Spencer reposted the bit with a note: “I was wondering what happened to my Ma wig.” The wig’s whereabouts: solved. Canada’s drinking-alone problem: solved as well.
