Home Entertainment Weekend box office – Halloween slices its way to record-breaking debut

Weekend box office – Halloween slices its way to record-breaking debut

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In case you haven’t noticed, this has been quite the October. Just a few weeks ago, Venom defied its mixed critical reception to debut to record-setting numbers, posting the highest October opening in box office history with $80.2 million, and then kept that momentum up for an above-expectations second weekend take as well. And for a while there this weekend past, as Halloween posted the largest Friday opening for October ever, it appeared that the symbiote comic book antihero had found his match in a certain knife-wielding killer in a William Shatner mask. In the end though, Halloween fell just slightly short of Venom’s overall weekend record but its $77.5 million three-day earnings was still enough to land it in the history books.

Besides for now being the second-largest October opening ever in the US, the Jamie Lee Curtis-led slasher sequel is now also the largest opening for any horror movie with a female lead and the second-largest opening for an R-rated horror behind last year’s It ($123.4 million). This is also the largest opening ever in the long-running Halloween franchise’s history, blowing away the $26.3 million opening of Rob Zombie’s 2007 reboot. With an additional $14.3 million earned from 23 international markets (it still needs to hit the majority of regions around the world), this now puts Halloween at $91.8 million globally off just a $10 million budget.

It would appear that nobody else was brave enough to stand against serial killer Michael Meyers, as there were no other new debuts this weekend past. Last week’s champion, Venom, dropped two spots though, which meant that A Star Is Born repeated its runner-up status for the 3rd weekend running with $19.3 million domestic and another $22.8 million from international markets, pushing the early Oscar contender past the $200 million mark globally. Venom’s 3rd place brought it another $18.1 million from inside the US borders and another $32.3 million from outside. Sony’s comic book movie is now sitting on $461.8 million worldwide.

Besides for the abovementioned, the only real point of attention is The Hate U Give getting a huge expansion of over 2000 cinemas, bumping it up to 6th place. Robert Redford’s The Old Man & the Gun also bumped up its cinema count considerably, letting it bring up the rear of the top 10. Unfortunately, not all the expansions this weekend past brought good news. Western comedy The Sisters Brothers may have hit over 1000 more cinemas this weekend past, but could not capitalize at all. With a miserable $650 per-theatre average, the lowest in the top 20 films on the charts, it could only get to 13th place.

Let’s see what the rest of the US box office chart looks like:

No.Movie Name Weekend gross Percentage change US Domestic gross Worldwide gross Last Week's Position
1Halloween $77.5 million NE $77.5 million $91.8 million NE
2A Star is Born $19.3 million -32% $126.3 million $201 million 2nd
3Venom $18.1 million -48% $171.1 million $461.8 million 1st
4Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween $9.7 million -38% $28.8 million $39.9 million 4th
5First Man $8.5 million -46% $29.9 million $55.4 million 3rd
6The Hate U Give $7.5 million +331% $10.6 million $10.6 million 9th
7Smallfoot $6.6 million -27% $66.3 million $137.1 million 5th
8Night School $5 million -35% $66.9 million $84.4 million 6th
9Bad Times at the El Royale $3.3 million -53.7% $13.3 million $21.4 million 7th
10The Old Man & the Gun $2 million +123% $4.2 million $4.2 million 15th

Last Updated: October 22, 2018

4 Comments

  1. I hate to be that guy but Rob Zombies 2007 Halloween had an opening weekend gross of $26,362,367.
    The $58.2 million mentioned above was the films lifetime gross.

    Reply

    • Kervyn Cloete

      October 22, 2018 at 13:35

      Argh. Stupid me. Was reading the numbers and accidentally used the wrong one. Thanks for pointing out.

      Reply

  2. For the Emperor!

    October 22, 2018 at 13:17

    The Halloween trailers seemed interesting, but not for me. Saw Venom over the weekend, and it was quit fun. Many flaws of course but still fun 🙂

    Reply

  3. Kapitan Balalaika

    October 22, 2018 at 13:49

    Glad to see Venom doing well.

    Reply

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