Audiences still Regretting You as studios neglect to release new movies this Halloween

Hollywood starred in its own horror movie this month, with box-office business hitting 30-year lows. Ignoring the pandemic and inflation, the box office had its worst month since 1997. There will be plenty of finger-pointing over who’s to blame (The LA Dodgers, Halloween festivities, Jared Leto), but as usual, the call is coming from inside the house, and Halloween weekend didn’t help things. As major media conglomerates dueled over Taylor Sheridan and decided the best way to carve up Warner Bros., all of them forgot—or neglected—to release anything new this weekend. With exactly zero new releases, The Numbers estimates that the Colleen Hoover adaptation Regretting You took the top of the box office with $8.1 million, and Black Phone 2 wasn’t far behind at $8 million. We suppose we should thank the star of both films, Mason Thames, a.k.a. “Mr. October,” for saving Hollywood over the worst box office weekend of the year.

With nothing new, audiences returned to two movies they’ve been enjoying for weeks. Chainsaw Man — The Movie picked up an additional $6 million for the three-week total of $30 million domestically. Chainsaw Man‘s $139 million global success is far behind Demon Slayer‘s global take of $667 million, but we’re sure Sony isn’t complaining. Tied for number three is another Sony release (sort of). KPop Demon Hunters: A Netflix Sing-Along Event returned to 2,800 theaters this weekend. We say “probably” because Netflix won’t be reporting the film’s grosses, Variety reports.

Expanding this weekend, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia added more than 2,000 screens and made $4.8 million in its second week. Although Bugonia expanded much more quickly, and it theoretically benefited from years of Oscar wins for both the director and the star, the movie opened similarly to Lanthimos and Emma Stone’s other collaborations, with some caveats. Kinds Of Kindness never hit as many theaters as Bugonia and topped out at under a thousand. Meanwhile, Poor Things overperformed in about 800 theaters for a month, grossing $17 million, before expanding wide and reaching $100 million. Bugonia would have to hold strong with audiences over the next few weeks to meet Poor Things, but this weekend, it was enough to beat a Back To The Future re-release, which made $4.7 million.

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