‘Halloween Ends’ Is Sweet for Universal – but Poisoned Candy for the Box Office

In general, the fortunes of film studios and movie theaters are intertwined — but on an individual basis, a film’s box office performance can be a success for one but not the other. This weekend’s release of Universal/Blumhouse’s “Halloween Ends” is a perfect example.

For Universal and Blumhouse, “Halloween Ends” is going to be another fruitful title from their partnership together. With the name brand of “Halloween” behind it, the two studios spent more on production and marketing than the usual Blumhouse film with a reported budget of around $30 million, which has already been recouped with a $41.2 million opening weekend.

Universal also hoped that “Halloween Ends” will bring eyes to its struggling Peacock streaming service, making the film’s day-and-date availability on streaming part of a Halloween marketing campaign advertising Blumhouse movies. While streaming viewership numbers for “Ends” versus competitors like Amazon’s “Rings of Power” and Marvel’s “Werewolf by Night” aren’t immediately available, Universal reported that “Ends” has become Peacock’s most watched film in the first two days of release.

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But for theaters, this $41 million launch is only positive when contextualized against the terrible two months of box office revenue that came before it. “Ends” has earned the highest opening weekend of any film since the $44.3 million start of fellow Universal horror film “Nope” back on the weekend of July 22. So far, only 12 films have opened above $40 million this year. And with “Ends,” Universal owns four of them.

“Halloween Ends” has also pushed estimated overall weekend grosses to $81 million, the highest the North American market has seen since the $88 million total earned during the opening weekend of “Bullet Train” in early August.

But “Ends” is also below the opening weekend of last year’s “Halloween” film “Halloween Kills,” which opened to $49 million and which “Ends” was projected to match by independent trackers. This on its own wouldn’t be so bad, but audience metrics for “Ends” are also lower than “Kills,” which already was tepidly received.

The damage is as follows: a C+ on CinemaScore, 64% positive rating on Comscore/Screen Engine’s Posttrak, and Rotten Tomatoes scores of 40% critics and 56% audience. For comparison, reception scores for “Kills” were a B- on CinemaScore, 69% on Posttrak and 39%/66% split on Rotten Tomatoes.

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It’s quite common for horror movies to earn a B- or C+ on CinemaScore — Paramount’s enduring current horror release “Smile” got the former — but it’s particularly damning for “Halloween Ends” considering how the first installment of this “Halloween” reboot trilogy got a B+ in 2018, and all three installments likely had hardcore fans of the franchise filling up seats at the opening day screenings where these polls were conducted.

Based on critics’ reviews and early online buzz, the biggest criticism against “Halloween Ends” is that while the film does end with the much-advertised fight to the death between Jamie Lee Curtis’ famous final girl Laurie Strode and the murderous Michael Myers, neither Laurie, Michael nor her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) are the film’s primary focus prior to that showdown.

More than anyone else, the film focuses on new character Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), a young man ostracized by the residents of Haddonfield, Illinois after accidentally killing a young boy he was babysitting, leading him down a path to becoming the town’s next villain. For those drawn to the reboot trilogy by the adversarial relationship between Laurie and Michael, this isn’t what they hoped for.

“It begs the question: Why were [director David Gordon Green] and the writers of each film so desperate to avoid the Strode women as primary heroines?” wrote Jim Vorel in a scathing review for Paste. “Why not introduce Corey two films ago, if he’s going to be the crux of the entire series? What did actress Andi Matichak do to piss off these producers, that she was never allowed to become the central star of these movies? What about the granddaughter of Laurie Strode makes her an uninteresting protagonist in Green’s eyes?”

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In 2018, “Halloween” legged out decently from a $76 million opening to a $159 million domestic total, but “Kills” was much more frontloaded with a $92 million total after its $49 million opening. In its second weekend, “Kills” collapsed to $14.4 million, a 70% weekend drop.

In that second weekend, “Kills” went up against the release of eventual Oscar winner “Dune.” Next weekend, “Halloween Ends” will go up against the DC blockbuster “Black Adam,” which is projected for at least a $60 million opening. Between competition from that film, the day-and-date release strategy and the poor word-of-mouth, “Ends” may be in for an even tougher second weekend fall and may even finish with a lower domestic total than the $89.8 million earned by original Blumhouse title “The Black Phone” this summer.

And this is why this trilogy capper is such poisoned candy for theaters. Certainly, they need all the help they can get, and a $41 million opening is an improvement over what we’ve seen in the past two months. But a major reason why Regal Cinemas filed for bankruptcy is because the pandemic has forced exhibitors into such a deep financial hole that the damage brought by any slump in the box office is compounded. Theaters need more periods like what we saw during the early summer, with $100 million-plus openings on a consistent basis… but Hollywood just isn’t in a position to provide that for them right now.

Put “Halloween Ends” in the win column for Universal alongside “Jurassic World: Dominion,” “Nope,” “Minions: The Rise of Gru” and “Black Phone.” But compared to what theaters have gotten in the past from Laurie and Michael, exhibitors are more likely to see it as a disappointment.

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