‘Halloween Ends’ Nabs Solid $41 Million Despite Peacock

You could practically hear Michael Myers (now around 65 years old) telling Art the Clown and the various baddies (no spoilers) from Barbarian, The Invitation and Smile to get the hell off his lawn. Despite concurrent availability on Peacock, Universal and Blumhouse’s Halloween Ends opened on target with $41.25 million in its debut Fri-Sun frame. I’ve read chatter elsewhere that the Peacock factor hurt the film’s theatrical reception and that somehow this poorly reviewed, willfully divisive franchise-ender (for a franchise that has ended before and everyone knows will eventually be restarted) was supposed to open closer to $55 million. However, recent ‘fine, whatever’ trilogy enders like Fifty Shades Freed, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and The Maze Runner: The Death Cure opened with 80% of their respective predecessor’s opening weekends. Halloween Ends pulled 84% of Halloween Kills’ $49 million domestic launch.

Not every ‘it all ends here’ finale plays like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II or Avengers: Endgame, especially with poor reviews and nothing new to offer. Some successfully sell the ‘end of an era’ hook. The critically acclaimed and unique (due to its real-world template and R rating) Logan parlayed Hugh Jackman’s last ride (uh…) into an $88 million Fri-Sun opening compared to $85 million for X-Men Origins: Wolverine and $53 million for The Wolverine. Right or wrong, if Marvel thought merely offering Deadpool 3 was enough to make it an event, they wouldn’t have coaxed Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine back into the saddle. Even Breaking Dawn part II earned about what the earlier Twilight Saga sequels made ($281-$300 million) in North America, with the same over/under $140 million opening weekend as New Moon and Breaking Dawn part I.

Did Halloween Ends, which promised a finale to the Michael Myers/Laurie Strode saga, lose a few bucks this weekend by being available on Peacock? Well, it was their most-watched movie ever in a two-day period. However, even a 10% bump is $45 million, which is the same ‘hold’ on opening weekend as Jurassic World Dominion ($145 million) compared to Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ($148 million). That a poorly reviewed threequel to Halloween, following the poorly reviewed Halloween Kills, was never going to somehow approximate the lightning-in-a-bottle arrival of Halloween ($77 million in 2018). Such thinking made up my villain origin story in the days of ‘Pearl Harbor will surely top $100 million over Memorial Day!’ and ‘Book of Shadows will open with $30 million!’ There’s a reason I tend to be the guy saying, “Wait… let’s cool our jets here.”

As with most biggies in the Covid era, what happened happened and couldn’t have happened any other way. The Matrix Resurrections was always going to be a commercial miss, with or without HBO Max. Black Widow was never going to get anywhere near $1 billion worldwide, nor was Tenet or Wonder Woman 1984. David Gordon Green’s Halloween Ends opened with $41.25 million this weekend, which is the third-biggest R-rated opening of the Covid era (since Bad Boys For Life in January of 2020) behind Jordan Peele’s Us ($44 million last July) and Halloween Kills ($49 million in October of 2021). The earlier two Halloween movies (even the 2018 one with great reviews and oodles of free media attention) were painfully frontloaded ($159 million from a $77 million debut and $92 million/$49 million), so we can expect likewise this time too.

We’re still talking about a $33 million R-rated slasher threequel that had already earned $58 million global (including $3.5 million in IMAX) and should reach over/under $80 million domestic and around $115 million global. The Blumhouse trilogy cost about $63 million in total and should crack $500 million globally in the end. This is a franchise that, before 2018, had exactly one (Halloween H20 in 1998) well-liked and well-received (by the masses) installment. All due respect to the various champions of Revenge of Michael Myers, Curse of Michael Myers and Rob Zombie’s Halloween II, but Michael Myers spent even the 1980s taking a pop culture backseat to the likes of Fred Krueger, Jason Vorhees and Chucky. But now Michael Myers is currently the most profitable (budget versus gross) supernatural horror slasher of all, almost entirely due to the Blumhouse trilogy.

This marks the 16th #1 opening for Blumhouse (including Freaky, which did not get a day-and-date Peacock/theater release). Universal has four of this year’s 12 $40 million-plus openings (Halloween Ends, Minions: The Rise of Gru, Jurassic World Dominion and Nope). That’s more than any other studio and sans any Marvel/DC properties. Even with ParamountPARA
offering up a breakout horror hit right when Universal starts to get cocky (A Quiet Place in early 2018, Smile three weeks ago), the ComcastCMCSA
-owned studio still is the unofficial king of the horror movie mountain (see also: The Black Phone), which feels appropriate since they helped invent the modern horror movie with their 1930’s Dracula, Frankenstein, Mummy and Invisible Man flicks. I wish their Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights mazes were anywhere near as immersive and scary as Knotts Scary Farm (or at least had a Minions maze), but I digress.

The only other major opener was the platform debut of United Artists’ Till. The well-reviewed and Oscar-buzzy (especially for Danielle Deadwyler) historical drama concerns the infamous murder of Emmitt Till, whose slaying (and much-publicized open-casket funeral) was one of the galvanizing moments of the Civil Rights movement. The Chinonye Chukwu-directed drama earned $240,940 from 16 theaters for a $15,059 per-theater average. It has a 100% fresh and 7.9/10 on Rotten Tomatoes, with 95% among verified users and, uh… 76% among unverified users (cough-review bombing-cough). It will expand next weekend into 150-200 theaters before going wide (alongside Tar) on October 28. Speaking of Tar, Cate Blanchett’s conductor drama expanded to 32 theaters. The Focus Features release will earn $360,000 (+127%) this weekend for a $10,000 per-theater average and $585,000 ten-day total. The Banshees of Inisherin opens in limited release next weekend.