Halloween weekend 2025

As I’ve been saying for a couple of weeks, today is every bit the wipeout I expected. Over the years, as Halloween has slowly morphed from a sugar frenzy for Kids into an Adult Cosplay Event where you get to see what’s really going on in your friends heads, we’ve seen it take a bigger slice out of the box-office. And there’s no other day of the week where it takes a bigger slice than when it’s on Friday. But this year is going to be worse because, it’s the movies, stupid. We had a record low October so we just don’t have the films to compel consumers to go tonight. The good news is that last year sucked too (Halloween was on Thursday, and since we open films on the worst day of the week, no substantial film wanted to go there) and the two new wide releases, Here and Absolution, only grossed $6.3 million between them. However, last year Venom 3’s weekend 2 grossed $25 million and that’s probably going to be about the same number we’re behind last year this weekend. But next weekend we have 5 new wide releases so we should right the ship and be competitive with last year.

I’m going to keep it short today (you’re welcome), since there’s not much going on. I’m going to take a stab at some of the grosses below, but because today is so bad (and the holdovers are weak), the winning film this weekend might not even get to about $7 million or so.

Anyway, with the same expected accuracy of Gayle King’s December call times, here are some brief thoughts on the weekend box-office.

There are no less than 4 (possibly 5 or 6) films that could plausibly win the weekend this weekend. The Black Phone 2, Chainsaw Man, Bugonia* and Regretting You all look like they could win the weekend, and they all could end up in the $5 million to $7 million range. The Black Phone 2 is obviously the best of the bunch today, but I’m not sure what the rest of the weekend will bring. Bugonia and Regretting You should have the biggest jump tomorrow because they skew the most adult, and as far Chainsaw Man I’m still trying to figure out what those Anime freaks do so that’s a wild card.

There’s a re-issue of Back to the Future that’s got some decent numbers today, but it’s as flat as the repertory films have been lately, so it’s probably going to end up closer to a $3 million to $4 million weekend, but if it’s not a one day wonder it’s got the numbers today to contend for the weekend.

K-Pop Demon Hunters - The movie that when you mention it around anyone at Sony they put their fingers in their ears saying ‘sorry, can’t hear you’ went back into theaters this weekend but as usual those cowards at Netflix don’t report grosses, probably because they’re too busy looking at their stock price. It’s possible some numbers could leak out and this could win the weekend but if they don’t care, why should we?

• Apple and Google AI/Autocomplete really hates this title, and no matter how many times I change it back to Bugonia, it thinks I’m talking about a flower and changes it again. AI seems to really have issues with the nuances of our business, every time I write about the weekend in this email, Apple Mail swears I’m talking about the artist The Weekend and capitalizes both words. It thinks I shouldn’t use the word presales and will either change it to resales or presages (and I don’t even know what that is).