Box Office: ‘Halloween Kills’ Carves Up $5M Thursday

Zero more days till Halloween Kills, Halloween Kills, Halloween Kills. Zero more days till Halloween Kills... Silver Shamrock!

Universal and Blumhouse’s Halloween Kills opened theatrically last night, exactly a year behind schedule, with a decent-enough $4.85 million in previews. That’s understandably below the $7.7 million Thursday gross for Halloween in October 2018. The previous David Gordon Green-directed flick earned 10.1% of its boffo $76 million opening weekend via previews. A similar score here would give Halloween Kills a $48 million Fri-Sun debut. A Thursday-to-weekend percentage akin to It Chapter Two ($10.5 million toward a $91 million debut in 2019 compared to $13.5 million/$123 million for It in 2017) would give the film a still-potent $42 million opening.

The R-rated, $20 million slasher sequel was, even in non-Covid times, never going to be as successful as its 2018 predecessor. That relaunch/legacy sequel again pitted Jamie Lee Curtis against Michael Myers in a film that featured the participation of John Carpenter and original Michael Myers actor Nick Castle while ignoring every prior Halloween sequel. Buoyed by good reviews (79% fresh and 6.8/10 on Rotten Tomatoes) and plenty of frankly generational amnesia which forgot about Halloween H20 covering many of the same ideas and themes, the film scored the second-biggest R-rated horror debut of all time (now third between the It flicks), before frontloading to $159 million domestic and $256 million worldwide.

Speaking of It, the second chapter dipped 26% between installments on opening weekend. 74% of $76 million is $56 million, which was arguably the best-case-scenario debut for Halloween Kills in non-Covid times. But throw in lousy reviews (45% and 5.3/10) which emphasized that Laurie Strode was bedridden and far away from Michel Myers for the majority of the movie, and, well, even Halloween II ($25 million in 1981) earned 47% less than Halloween ($47 million in 1978).

Even with better reviews and buzz, the franchise was still going to lose a plenty of “just curious the first time” moviegoers. Offhand, a 1/3 drop ($50 million) would be in line with the opening weekends of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ($148 million versus $208 million for Jurassic World) and The Fate of the Furious ($99 million versus $147 million for Furious 7). As such, anything close to that wouldn’t just be a “successful disappointment” (IE - how it would have opened had it underwhelmed in normal times) but a business-as-usual success.

Doubly-so with Covid variables, the film arriving concurrently day-and-date on Comcast’s Peacock streaming platform and the comparative performances of The Forever Purge ($45 million domestic), Old ($48 million domestic) and Candyman ($60 million domestic). With or without a Covid curve, Halloween Kills will likely become another sequel to a break-out smash that “underwhelms” by merely grossing about what was expected from the first flick. Of course, when your $10 million slasher grosses $256 million worldwide, the $20 million sequel can fall quite a bit and still be quite profitable.

The Last Duel earned $350,000 in Thursday previews, an expected (but unfortunate) early result for Ridley Scott’s medieval melodrama. The well-reviewed (and quite good) Matt Damon/Jodie Comer/Adam Driver/Ben Affleck flick, about an accusation of rape which results on France’s last legally-sanctioned duel to the death, is being looked at as a test case for the viability of non-franchise, adult-skewing biggies in the new normal. Such flicks have faced an uphill battle for years, and the pandemic-specific variables won’t make things any easier.