Box office earnings in October have crashed to levels not seen since the late 1990s, with Halloween weekend becoming the worst of the year so far.<\/p>\n
According to a report in Variety,<\/a> cinema takings for October in North America totalled $425m (\u00a3323m), the lowest figure since October 1997, when it was $385m \u2013 not counting October 2020, when North American cinemas only took $63m<\/a> as moviegoing was severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n A number of factors have been blamed for the poor results. Notably, there was a paucity of putative blockbusters, with the only large-scale effects movie on release being Tron: Ares, which took $67m in North America, as part of a disappointing $133m worldwide gross against its $180m reported budget<\/a>.<\/p>\n Also disappointing was the performance of so-called \u201cawards season\u201d films, with Dwayne Johnson wrestling movie The Smashing Machine, Julia Roberts #MeToo drama After the Hunt, and music biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere all grossing less than expected.<\/p>\n The end of October customarily delivers a boost from horror movies, but with the date of Halloween falling on a Friday, when a large section of the intended audience would be otherwise occupied, box office receipts for the weekend of 31 October to 2 November were the lowest of the year, with a total of $48.3m<\/a>. Also contributing to the disappointment was the absence of any successful horror releases: the leading horror release of the season, Black Phone 2, managed $8m over the Halloween weekend, while the putatively buzzy Shelby Oaks performed poorly<\/a>, taking just $770,000 from its relatively significant release in more than 1,700 theatres.<\/p>\n Cinemagoing over the Halloween weekend in North America was also affected by the climax of baseball\u2019s World Series, which finished in the early morning of 2 November<\/a>.<\/p>\n Box office analyst Jeff Bock of Exhibitor Relations told Variety: \u201cThe major releases this month failed to deliver. Simple as that.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cApart from the moderately successful Black Phone 2, there just weren\u2019t enough horror films to entice moviegoers. That should be a no-brainer.\u201d<\/p>\n