‘Halloween Ends’ Trailer Sells A Series (Or At Least Season) Finale

Since Salem’s Lot has been tragically (but understandably) moved off the September 9 slot, I’d imagine the only “big” horror trailer we’re getting this week will be the first teaser for Halloween Ends. This is pretty much the same brief tease we saw at CinemaCon, which makes sense since the footage wasn’t released online. There’s no reason not to use it now to reduce trailer repetition. Instead, they can recycle the CinemaCon clip as the first teaser and cut one more conventional trailer sometime in August (with Idris Elba’s Beast) or September (perhaps with 20th Century Studios’ Barbarian).

I will be interested in what Warner Bros. Discovery will reveal or not reveal regarding their DC Films slate. While we’ve already had the Black Adam trailer this past June (in line with Jurassic World Dominion), the footage we all saw from Shazam: Fury of the Gods, The Flash and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom remained for “our eyes only.” That said, I wouldn’t be shocked to see an actual trailer for Shazam 2 pop online to the kid-friendly superhero sequel that could be attached to DC League of Super Pets next Friday. Beyond that, they can drop a conventional Aquaman 2 trailer with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in November or Shazam 2 this December.

Anyway, I cannot imagine a less “important” release for any studio than Halloween Ends. David Gordon Green and Danny McBride’s Halloween legacy sequel (which ignored every previous Michael Myers film after John Carpenter and Debra Hill’s 1978 original) earned $256 million on a $10 million budget. Halloween Kills made $131 million worldwide on a $20 million budget despite being concurrently available on Peacock. I don’t know the budget for Halloween Ends, but I can’t imagine it was much more than $20-$30 million, so this trilogy is already drowning in profits before a single ticket is sold. The franchise has already earned $387 million on a combined $30 million budget, not even counting whatever Universal got for letting Halloween Kills play on Peacock in the first 60 days.

There’s little this film’s marketing campaign must do other than make sure people know it exists and offer some promise of relative finality. There may be other Halloween films after this trilogy, but I must presume this will end the Michael Myers versus Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) story. Well, the story “ended” in Halloween 2 in 1981, in Halloween H20 in 1998 and in Halloween Resurrection in 2002. Halloween Kills still has the biggest R-rated opening weekend since Bad Boys for Life in January of 2020, and it dropped no more from Halloween than did Halloween II, Halloween Resurrection and Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2 fell from Halloween (1978), H20 and Halloween (2007).

However, Jordan Peele’s Nope is expected to open above $50 million and take the overall “Covid-era” R-rated crown from Scream ($141 million worldwide earlier this year). I’m expecting less for Halloween Ends, as this probably won’t get the finale bump associated with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II or The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn part II. However, even a Matrix Revolutions-level drop (from $471 million in 1999 to $742 million in 2003 to $427 million in late 2003) would still leave Halloween Ends with around $76 million worldwide, or nearly four times a theoretical $20 million budget. That obviously wouldn’t be great, but it’s not like Universal is expecting Halloween Returns in a few years.