After a strong opening weekend, the slasher franchise finale Halloween Ends drops a whopping 80% on its second weekend at the domestic box office.
Halloween ends experienced a significant drop at the domestic box office during its second weekend. The film is Blumhouse’s third entry Halloween trilogy, which started with the 2018 release Halloween, a direct sequel to the 1978 classic slasher of the same name that ignores the continuity of the nine sequels and remakes that followed. 2021’s Halloween kills took place on the same night, and the new movie Halloween ends continues several years later with the surviving characters, including Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode.
The opening weekend of October 14 for Halloween ends was far from perfect, but also not entirely alarming to box office pundits. The film took in an opening weekend of $41.25 million, which was by a narrow margin the lowest of the reboot trilogy (Halloween 2018 earned $76.2 million and Halloween kills earned $49.3 million). However, it was the highest-performing 2022 feature film in quite some time, earning the best opening weekend for a No. 1 film since Jordan Peele’s alien thriller. no came out in July.
Per Variety, Halloween ends is expected to make a drop of about 80%, possibly even more, in the second weekend at the domestic box office. This is the worst week 2 drop of the week 2 trilogy, compared to Halloween kills‘ decrease of 71% and Halloween The 58% drop in 2018. While horror movies are likely to experience a significant drop after their opening weekend, the same doesn’t seem to be the case with Ends‘theatrical competition’ Smilewhich opened on September 30 and fell just 22% in week 2, while slowly floating downwards by equally narrow margins as it enters week four.
Why Is Halloween Ends So Bad?
There are several factors that likely contribute to: Halloween ends‘ poor box office performance. The first is the fact that the film was released on NBCUniversal’s streaming service Peacock on the same day as its theatrical premiere. While that same release strategy didn’t seem to hinder Halloween ends considerable, Halloween ends has also received strong negative reactions from many fans of the franchise, likely keeping stragglers away from seeing the film or making them reconsider making it a point to see it in theaters.
A bottleneck for many of Halloween ends‘ opponents is the lack of focus on Michael Myers. Instead, the film focused on fueling hatred in the town of Haddonfield and how it affects the life of a tortured young man named Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell). Those who wanted this supposedly final entry to feature a more focused showdown between Michael and Laurie were deeply disappointed, which likely led to this serious decline in interest in the film.
Source: Variety
