‘Haunted Mansion’ flatlining at the box office perfectly outlines a major horror mistake studios continue to make

With spooky season just around the corner, a juicy assortment of projects is set to be released in the breezy autumn months — with September kicking off the festivities with flicks such as Saw X and The Nun II. But while horror movies being released in months like September and October is undoubtedly the best decision a film studio can make, I have to sit back and wonder why horror movies — and Halloween flicks, specifically — are still being released in the summer months with hopes that said film will perform successfully.

As we’ve seen already with Haunted Mansion — Disney’s $150 million project that has bombed at the box office thus far — releasing a horror movie in the summer is not exactly a profitable choice that works out well. In order to truly capture the essence of horror and all things spooky, releasing these movies at any point in the year other than the autumn months just feels wrong. 

Of course, there are exceptions such as M3GAN in January and Scream VI in March — where both movies performed well at the box office — but if you ask these fellow horror fanatics, releasing movies which fit within the horror/Halloween genre in October (sometimes September) feels like the right choice:

All of this is not to say that horror movies can’t be released during any month of the calendar year, but with Disney pushing a children’s horror movie that focuses on an acclaimed ride at Disney’s theme park, then why wouldn’t the undisputed choice be to release the film during October when the ambiance of Halloween is firmly in the air?