Paramount and Constantin Movies’ romance-drama Regretting You — the second Colleen Hoover ebook adaptation to hit the massive display after It Ends With Us — is proclaiming itself the victor of this 12 months’s Halloween field workplace contest.
In response to Sunday estimates from Paramount, Regretting You positioned No. 1 with $8.1 million from 3,245 cinemas in its sophomore outing.
Or did it? Common is likewise estimating a first-place end for Blumhouse’s Black Cellphone 2 with $8 million from 3,425 cinemas (rival studios additionally present the horror sequel, now in its third weekend, coming in forward of Regretting You).
However final weekend, Black Cellphone 2 and Regretting You did swap positions final weekend when remaining numbers got here in, with Regretting You beating the Blumhouse pic. Monday will decide the proper order of the Oct. 31-Nov. 2 body, and whether or not Paramount was being too bullish.
Usually in such conditions, a studio in Common’s place would name the competition a tie, however on this case, nobody is complaining, contemplating general ticket gross sales for the weekend got here in at $49.8 million — the worst displaying of the 12 months thus far.
However that’s not essentially the most scary reality — it was the lowest-grossing Halloween weekend in 31 years, in response to Comscore. This excludes 2000, when the COVID-19 disaster compelled theater closures for months.
The final time Halloween weekend income got here in decrease was in 1993, when mixed ticket gross sales reached $49.2 million, not adjusted for inflation, in response to Paul Dergarabedian at Comscore.
This 12 months’s Halloween weekend meltdown — which follows the worst October in 27 years — is as a result of lack of any new product, a carry-over occasion pic, similar to 2024’s Venom: The Final Dance. This 12 months, exhibitors needed to depend on holdovers, rereleases together with Again to the Future and the enlargement of Focus Options’ awards darling and specialty providing Bugonia, which earned a tidy $4.8 million because it expanded into 2,043 theaters.
Halloween is usually a robust vacation for Hollywood cinema homeowners, particularly when the precise day falls on a Friday, because it did this 12 months. Regretting You took a serious hit on Friday since its target market — youthful females — have been in any other case occupied. On Saturday, gross sales spiked 200 %.
Many anticipated Regretting You to be dinged by usually withering evaluations, however the female-fueled pic garnered robust exits on PostTrak and boasts an viewers rating of 87 % on Rotten Tomatoes (its CinemaScore, nonetheless, was solely a B). It’s additionally a testomony to Hoover’s continued recognition.
Extra to come back.