‘Halloween Ends’ Going Theatrical Day & Date On Peacock, Just Like Previous Sequel

It looks like Peacock needs to juice its paid subscriptions some more. Universal/Blumhouse/Miramax’s Halloween Ends, which is already set for theatrical release on October 14, will also debut on NBUniversal’s Peacock streaming service day-and-date. This is a similar practice to what happened with the previous installment of the revived Jamie Lee Curtis horror franchise, Halloween Kills, last October.

Similar to Halloween Kills, I understand that the creative partners on Halloween Ends are being made whole financially given the shift to a theatrical day-and-date distribution strategy.

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Halloween Ends is one of the first tentpoles of autumn after a desert filled with adult counterprogramming titles. Uni would argue that the simultaneous Peacock run for Halloween Kills last year didn’t dent the box office with its $49 millionopening, and a $92M domestic final. The sequel for Peacock pulled in 2.8 million U.S. households, according to Samba TV, during a 30-day period.

The first revived Halloween from director David Gordon Green, and EP and story by guy Danny McBride, owns the fourth-highest opening of October at $76.2M and turned the late October period into a box office launchpad.

Don’t blame Covid for Halloween Ends going day-and-date; it’s pure experimentation and based on Peacock’s need for more subs. Reported positive Covid cases continue to decline and dipped below the 100,000-a-day mark for the first time in several weeks as of Saturday. The CDC is reporting that the rolling seven-day average was down 9.9% to 95,650 per day. As for hospitalizations, that number also fell last week, by 6.1%, to 5,690 per day.

Here’s Curtis’ message on social Tuesday about the day-and-date strategy, which she says last time was successful both in theaters and on streaming:

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