Weekend estimates: Halloween kills it with $50.4-million debut

October 17, 2021

Halloween Kills

Halloween Kills is continuing the good run of results at the domestic box office this weekend with a very solid opening, which Universal is projecting will just clear $50 million. That’s easily ahead of Friday morning’s predicted $41.2 million, and the second-best weekend for the 43-year-old franchise, only surpassed by the 2018 incarnation. It also means a hat-trick of $50-million-plus weekends to start October.

Here’s how the weekend looks as of Sunday morning…





Halloween Kills will beat our Friday-morning prediction, which took into account Thursday preview numbers, by 22%. The model reckoned a “par score” going into the weekend was $36 million, so this is a really good result for the venerable horror franchise, and shows that horror movies can still deliver at the box office after a few weaker results recently. A lot of the credit has to go to Jamie Lee Curtis, who has revitalized the franchise over the past two installments.

It’s also worth noting that Halloween Kills was released simultaneously on Peacock this weekend. That doesn’t seem to have taken much of a bite out of its earnings, which perhaps tells us more about Peacock than about the effect of day-and-date releases. It does complicate the story though—clearly just being available online isn’t enough to derail the opening weekend of a major movie, but availability on one of the leading platforms (Disney+ and HBO Max in particular) mostly likely does, as I’ve discussed in the past.

This weekend’s other new wide release, The Last Duel, is more of a disappointment, although its $4.82-million weekend is only 15% behind our Friday-morning prediction, and close to what the model predicted before Thursday preview numbers came in. This is a film that’s relying on long legs in theaters and in the home market, so this isn’t a disaster. Still, something closer to $10 million this weekend would have been welcome.

Overall, Halloween is earning enough to deliver a welcome “up” weekend for the market. No Time to Die did slightly better than expected in its second weekend, which also helps, although that is almost exactly offset by Venom suffering a decline of nearly 50% in its third weekend. All told, we’ll top $100 million again this weekend, for the third weekend in a row. That hasn’t happened since January, 2020.

International numbers

Halloween Kills is starting its international rollout with $5.5 million this weekend in 20 territories, led by $2.3 million in the United Kingdom and $1.3 million in Mexico.

No time to Die will post an estimated $53.988 million this weekend from 72 territories, taking it to $348.3 million internationally and $447.521 million worldwide. Its top markets this weekend are the United Kingdom, with $11.2 million taking it to $92.9 million in total; Germany, with $9.3 million for $46.3 million so far; France, with $5.6m for $17.3m; the Netherlands took $2.8m for $12.1m total; Russia added $2.6m for $8.9m; Japan, $1.74m for $16.3m; Switzerland, $1.6m for $7.8m; and Austria, with $1.02 million this weekend taking the film to $5.8 million there.

The Addams Family 2 earned $3.9 million from its first weekend in Russia, opened with $1.1 million in France, and posted an opening $1.1 million in Mexico. The UK was its best returning market, with $1.8 million for the weekend and $5.2 million in total so far. Its international cume to date from UPI markets is $16.2 million.

Dune will earn another $8.5 million this weekend from 36 markets to take its international total to $129.3 million. Top markets this weekend: Japan, with a $1.8-million opening; France, with $1.5 million taking it to $26.2 million so far; Germany, $1.1m for $17.5m; and Russia, with $574,000 taking it to $20.2 million to date.

- Weekend studio estimates

Bruce Nash,

Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Dune, Halloween, No Time to Die, Halloween Kills, Venom: Let There be Carnage, The Last Duel, The Addams Family 2, Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis