Halloween Makes Horror History With Huge Opening Weekend

Michael Myers is back, folks, and he’s returned in style.

Yes, after scoring a hugely impressive Friday night, everyone’s favorite William Shatner mask-wearing serial killer has finished off the weekend in the #1 spot at the box office, with Halloween slicing its way to the top with a whopping $77.5 million. That means it falls just short of the current October opening weekend record held by Venom ($80.2 million), but these figures still place Mr. Myers in some superb company.

Broken down, the pic earned the aforementioned $77.5 million domestically and $14.3 million overseas, combining for a current worldwide gross of $91.8 million. Analysts always expected Myers to perform well, but these numbers have far exceeded what people predicted – which was about $45-$50 million on home turf – and all but guarantees we haven’t seen the last of this iconic slasher.

In terms of where Halloween sits amongst it peers, well, like we said above, it’s now the second-biggest domestic debut for October behind Venom and the third biggest September/October debut behind Venom and It, which took in $123 million back in 2017. As Forbes points out, it’s also “the biggest opening for a slasher movie even adjusted for inflation, as Scream 2’s $33 million launch in 1997 would be $65m today.”

The good news doesn’t end there, either, as Halloween is now the fourth-biggest horror movie debut ever, with only It, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ($150 million) and Jurassic World ($208 million) ranking higher. And as far as R-rated horror debuts go, aside from It, the film sits ahead of everything else. Even looking outside the genre, in terms of all R-rated openings, Michael’s latest outing is in tenth place.

In other words, Halloween had an absolutely tremendous weekend and with the film expected to continue to perform well over the coming weeks, you can rest assured that the franchise has a long, bright future ahead of it.