{"id":257511,"date":"2025-11-02T22:11:05","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T22:11:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/257511\/"},"modified":"2025-11-02T22:11:05","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T22:11:05","slug":"october-box-office-hits-lowest-levels-in-nearly-three-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/257511\/","title":{"rendered":"October Box Office Hits Lowest Levels in Nearly Three Decades"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOctober was a bust at the box office as big-budget tentpoles and awards contenders like Disney\u2019s \u201cTron: Ares<\/a>\u201d and Dwayne Johnson\u2019s \u201cThe Smashing Machine<\/a>\u201d struggled to sell tickets.<\/p>\n

\n\tOverall revenues for the month were tragic with $425 million across all titles, the worst collective haul since October 1997 \u2014 when psychological thriller \u201cKiss the Girls,\u201d slasher \u201cI Know What You Did Last Summer\u201d and supernatural mind-bender \u201cThe Devil\u2019s Advocate\u201d were the top-grossing titles \u2014 with $385 million, not adjusted for inflation. This ignominious record doesn\u2019t include 2020, when theaters hadn\u2019t rebounded from the pandemic and major studios were less than eager to unveil new films.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAn inauspicious Halloween ended a rather challenging month of October at the box office,\u201d says Comscore\u2019s head of marketplace trends, Paul Dergarabedian.<\/p>\n

\n\tSure enough, this Halloween was especially dre<\/a>adful with grosses between Friday and Sunday at just $49 million, marking the worst weekend of the entire year as holdover titles like Paramount\u2019s Colleen Hoover adaptation \u201cRegretting You\u201d and Universal\u2019s scary sequel \u201cBlack Phone 2\u201d topped North American charts. Several reasons were to blame for the scary-low turnout, including a dearth of new releases as well as the misfortune of Halloween landing on a Friday, which meant families were distracted by trick-or-treating. Then there was Saturday night\u2019s Major League Baseball championships<\/a>, which saw the Los Angeles Dodgers win the World Series over the Toronto Blue Jays in a nail-biting Game 7.<\/p>\n

\n\tBright spots for the month \u2014 including Taylor Swift\u2019s \u201cThe Release Party of a Showgirl\u201d and Sony and Crunchyroll\u2019s \u201cChainsaw Man\u201d \u2014 were few and far between and weren\u2019t enough to overcompensate for high-profile misses like Luca Guadagnino\u2019s \u201cAfter the Hunt\u201d ($7.8 million), Disney and 20th Century\u2019s \u201cSpringsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere\u201d ($20 million), and Jennifer Lopez\u2019s musical adaptation \u201cKiss of the Spider Woman\u201d ($1.6 million). <\/p>\n

\n\tSci-fi sequel \u201cTron: Ares\u201d ($126 million globally against a $180 million budget) and A24\u2019s \u201cSmashing Machine\u201d ($19 million against a $50 million budget) were particularly expensive for their respective studios to produce and resulted in tens of millions of dollars in theatrical losses. <\/p>\n

\n\tBut movies of all sizes and genres, including the family adventure \u201cGabby\u2019s Dollhouse: The Movie\u201d ($68 million), Channing Tatum-led dramedy \u201cRoofman\u201d ($27 million), Aziz Ansari\u2019s fantastical comedy \u201cGood Fortune\u201d ($14 million) and Neon\u2019s supernatural thriller \u201cShelby Oaks\u201d ($3.2 million), struggled to appeal to their target audiences. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe major releases this month failed to deliver. Simple as that,\u201d says box office analyst Jeff Bock of Exhibitor Relations. He also believes that Hollywood under-delivered on scary movies during the spookiest month of the year. \u201cApart from the moderately successful \u2018Black Phone 2,\u2019 there just weren\u2019t enough horror films to entice moviegoers,\u201d Bock adds. \u201cThat should be a no-brainer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOverall, it\u2019s been an up-and-down year; April was unexpectedly huge with \u201cA Minecraft Movie\u201d and \u201cSinners\u201d while March was abysmal with \u201cSnow White\u201d and \u201cThe Alto Knights.\u201d Currently, box office returns are 2.9% ahead of 2024 \u2014 a gap that\u2019s been rapidly shrinking since summer, when ticket sales were 25% ahead of last year. Meanwhile, domestic revenues remain more than 22% behind pre-pandemic times of 2019, according to Comscore. November and December releases, including \u201cZootopia 2,\u201d \u201cWicked: For Good\u201d and \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash,\u201d are expected to close the year on a high note.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNot to fear though,\u201d Bock says. \u201cHoliday season kicks into gear next weekend \u2014 and Hollywood will be breathing a huge sigh of relief.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"October was a bust at the box office as big-budget tentpoles and awards contenders like Disney\u2019s \u201cTron: Ares\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49,48,75,56312,4937],"class_list":{"0":"post-257511","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-the-smashing-machine","12":"tag-tron-ares"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}