It’s that time of year again, and not unexpected that the latest installment of the HALLOWEEN movie franchise would take the top spot on the North American box office charts. As the title HALLOWEEN ENDS makes clear, this is said to be Laurie Strode’s last stand against Michael Myers. After more than four decades, Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode has become one of the longest-running roles in cinema history.
The weekend gross of $41.3M blew past the best-case scenario for most pre-release forecasts. However, ENDS had a lower box office than each of the last two HALLOWEEN features, with HALLOWEEN KILLS earning $49.4M in its opening weekend starting 10/15/21 and the HALLOWEEN reboot earning $76.2M in its opening weekend starting 10/19/18.
Universal chose to release both this year’s HALLOWEEN ENDS and last year’s HALLOWEEN KILLS to theatres and streaming on Peacock, at no upcharge for subscribers. It’s clear that day & date release held back ticket sales at theatres, but it’s difficult to know by how much. More than one million viewers watched HALLOWEEN KILLS on Peacock during its opening weekend, which might otherwise have translated to $10M in box office sales. The relatively lower sales for HALLOWEEN ENDS could indicate that even more viewers took advantage of its same-time availability on Peacock.
No matter how you slice it, the HALLOWEEN series has been a financial bonanza for all involved. ENDS was produced on a very reasonable budget of $30M, which it more than earned back in three days in theatres. If this does wind up as the last film in the franchise, producers will be walking away from one of the most consistently profitable franchises in history. In fact, we would not be surprised to see HALLOWEEN resurrected, in some form, over the years ahead.
Delivering a one-two horror punch, SMILE pulled in another $7.4M this weekend, a drop of only 33% compared with last weekend’s result. LYLE, LYLE, CROCODILE finished third with $7.4M, a drop of 35% in its second week. THE WOMAN KING took fourth place with $3.7M, continuing its impressive run for the last five weeks.
After a very disappointing opening last week, AMSTERDAM slotted into fifth place with $2.9M, a steep decline of 55%. The ten-day gross now stands at $12M, and will likely wind up with only $20M in North America. AMSTERDAM had a sizable $80M budget, due in large part to its large cast of A-list stars. Its box office failure may become a cautionary tale, with studios thinking twice about investing in movies with expensive, ensemble casts.
Our indie watch last week highlighted the very limited 10-location debut of Neon’s TRIANGLE OF SADNESS. In its second weekend, this picture expanded to 31 locations and took in $337K, with the average per location dropping to $11K. In fact, sales at several of the initial ten locations dropped by more than 60%, which does not bode well for future expansion. TILL from United Artists Releasing opened this weekend at 16 theatres, grossing $250K for a very respectable $15K per location average.
