October Box Office Hits Lowest Levels in Nearly Three Decades

October was a bust at the box office as big-budget tentpoles and awards contenders like Disney’s “Tron: Ares” and Dwayne Johnson’s “The Smashing Machine” struggled to sell tickets.

Overall revenues for the month were tragic with $425 million across all titles, the worst collective haul since October 1997 — when psychological thriller “Kiss the Girls,” slasher “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and supernatural mind-bender “The Devil’s Advocate” were the top-grossing titles — with $385 million, not adjusted for inflation. This ignominious record doesn’t include 2020, when theaters hadn’t rebounded from the pandemic and major studios were less than eager to unveil new films.

“An inauspicious Halloween ended a rather challenging month of October at the box office,” says Comscore’s head of marketplace trends, Paul Dergarabedian.

Sure enough, this Halloween was especially dreadful with grosses between Friday and Sunday at just $49 million, marking the worst weekend of the entire year as holdover titles like Paramount’s Colleen Hoover adaptation “Regretting You” and Universal’s scary sequel “Black Phone 2” 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’s Major League Baseball championships, which saw the Los Angeles Dodgers win the World Series over the Toronto Blue Jays in a nail-biting Game 7.

Bright spots for the month — including Taylor Swift’s “The Release Party of a Showgirl” and Sony and Crunchyroll’s “Chainsaw Man” — were few and far between and weren’t enough to overcompensate for high-profile misses like Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt” ($7.8 million), Disney and 20th Century’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” ($20 million), and Jennifer Lopez’s musical adaptation “Kiss of the Spider Woman” ($1.6 million).

Sci-fi sequel “Tron: Ares” ($126 million globally against a $180 million budget) and A24’s “Smashing Machine” ($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.

But movies of all sizes and genres, including the family adventure “Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie” ($68 million), Channing Tatum-led dramedy “Roofman” ($27 million), Aziz Ansari’s fantastical comedy “Good Fortune” ($14 million) and Neon’s supernatural thriller “Shelby Oaks” ($3.2 million), struggled to appeal to their target audiences.

“The major releases this month failed to deliver. Simple as that,” 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. “Apart from the moderately successful ‘Black Phone 2,’ there just weren’t enough horror films to entice moviegoers,” Bock adds. “That should be a no-brainer.”

Overall, it’s been an up-and-down year; April was unexpectedly huge with “A Minecraft Movie” and “Sinners” while March was abysmal with “Snow White” and “The Alto Knights.” Currently, box office returns are 2.9% ahead of 2024 — a gap that’s 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 “Zootopia 2,” “Wicked: For Good” and “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” are expected to close the year on a high note.

“Not to fear though,” Bock says. “Holiday season kicks into gear next weekend — and Hollywood will be breathing a huge sigh of relief.”