Laurie Strode and Michael Myers’ final battle opened at the softer end of predictions this weekend, with David Gordon Green’s trilogy capper Halloween Ends taking $41.2 million at the North American box-office.
If we’re comparing apples to apples, or pumpkins to pumpkins, then Ends opening is some way off that of 2018’s Halloween, which opened with $76.2 million and a 79% Rotten Tomatoes rating.
Obviously that was in a pre-pandemic world, when the idea of day-and-date openings for a film of this size was unthinkable, but that was the release strategy for both sequels, with 2021’s Halloween Kills opening with $49 million on the same day it was made available to stream on Peacock, and earning a generous 39% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Halloween Ends was projected to gross somewhere between $50 and $55 million this weekend, but poor word-of-mouth (read our review ★★ here) meant that it opened well below expectations with $41 million. However, these are still impressive numbers for a 44 year-old franchise that’s also available on streaming, and should it survive the opening of Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam, it will probably have legs for a couple of weeks in the lead up to Halloween.
The impact of Paramount’s genre rival Smile cannot be discounted either. The antithesis of the reception given to Halloween Ends (read our review ★★★★ here), Smile fell by around 33% for a third week total of $12 million, taking its domestic tally to $72 million after three weeks. The $17 million budgeted horror has now amassed $137 million worldwide, which is a total Halloween Ends will be hard pushed to match.
Other notable mentions in the chart were Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The Woman King, which held steady with a $3.7 million frame, pushing its total over the $60 million mark domestically, whereas David O. Russell’s star-studded flop Amsterdam spluttered to a $2.9 million sophomore frame and $12 million total.
As always the full rundown can be found over at BoxOfficeMojo.
