Halloween stays on top with $32 million second weekend
Halloween is still making a killing at the box office.
Director David Gordon Green’s slasher reboot is poised to sell an estimated $32 million in tickets at 3,990 theaters in the U.S. and Canada from Friday through Sunday, topping the chart for the second weekend and pushing the film’s domestic total past the $100 million mark. The Universal Pictures release will drop off about 58 percent from its big debut weekend.
After 10 days in theaters, Halloween has earned about $126.7 million in North America, and another $45.6 million overseas ($25.6 million this weekend), for a global total of about $172.3 million. It’s quite a haul for a movie that cost about $10 million to make.
Serving as a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s original 1978 Halloween, the new film ignores the nine other sequels and remakes and picks up 40 years later, with Jamie Lee Curtis’ hardened heroine Laurie Strode preparing for her inevitable rematch with masked killer Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney). Green directed from a script he wrote with Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley. Carpenter served as an executive producer and composed the score with his son, Cody Carpenter, and godson, Daniel Davies.
Critics’ reviews were solid, and audiences gave it a B-plus CinemaScore.
The pre-Halloween weekend is usually one of the quieter frames of the year, and this week’s only new wide release, Lionsgate’s submarine thriller Hunter Killer, is on track to open with a muted $6.7 million (in 2,720 theaters), good for fifth place. Reviews for the film were tepid, though moviegoers gave it an A-minus CinemaScore.
Overall, however, this October has been a record one at the box office: Powered by movies such as Halloween, Venom ($10.8 million this weekend), and A Star Is Born ($14.1 million this weekend), the monthly total has hit $789.9 million with a few days to go, eclipsing the $757.1 million earned for the entire month during the previous record-setting year of 2014.
In limited release, director Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria remake is arriving in two locations with an estimated $179,806, which works out to an impressive per-screen average of $89,903. Amazon Studios is distributing the film.
Overall box office is up 10.9 percent year-to-date, according to ComScore. See the Oct. 26-28 figures below.
1. Halloween — $32 million
2. A Star Is Born — $14.1 million
3. Venom — $10.8 million
4. Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween — $7.5 million
5. Hunter Killer — $6.7 million
6. The Hate U Give — $5.1 million
7. First Man — $4.9 million
8. Smallfoot — $4.8 million
9. Night School — $3.3 million
10. Mid90s — $3 million