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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.
According to a report in Variety, cinema takings for October in North America totalled $425m (£323m), the lowest figure since October 1997, when it was $385m – not counting October 2020, when North American cinemas only took $63m as moviegoing was severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
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.
Also disappointing was the performance of so-called “awards season” 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.
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. 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, taking just $770,000 from its relatively significant release in more than 1,700 theatres.
Cinemagoing over the Halloween weekend in North America was also affected by the climax of baseball’s World Series, which finished in the early morning of 2 November.
Box office analyst Jeff Bock of Exhibitor Relations told Variety: “The major releases this month failed to deliver. Simple as that.”
He added: “Apart from the moderately successful Black Phone 2, there just weren’t enough horror films to entice moviegoers. That should be a no-brainer.”
The news wasn’t all bad though: Taylor Swift’s The Official Release Party of a Showgirl saw huge activity on its only weekend in cinemas, taking $34m between 3 and 5 October .
