Talk about perfect scheduling. With its namesake around the corner, Halloween will easily scare up a second weekend at number one after its stellar $76.2 million launch last week.
The scheduling was also perfect because Halloween doesn’t face any noteworthy competition in its second weekend. There are a couple of new openers but they will be a blip on the radar which will allow Halloween to easily dominate.
While it’s often written that the weekend that lands prior to or around Halloween is deathly slow, it really depends on what the studios put on the marquee. Horror films typically shine during this time period because moviegoers are looking for one good scare as the holiday approaches. What’s certain is that even if Halloween drops the typical 50%+ in its second weekend, the film will have about $128 million in the bank at the domestic box office by Sunday and $200 million longterm is not out of the question. Since Halloween falls on a Wednesday this year, this weekend will prove to be when people will attend various Halloween parties so it could impact the box office a tad but I still think Halloween can pull in $33-36 million in weekend 2.
Opening this weekend is Hunter Killer, another generic looking action movie starring Gerard Butler that continues to make you question what happened to his career. It’s 38% rotten on Rotten Tomatoes heading into the weekend and there was very little marketing push from Lionsgate so it looks like they dumped it here and hoped for the best. I think the best they can hope for is about $7 million for the weekend.
Johnny English Strikes Again spies into 544 locations this weekend as the Rowan Atkinson spoof-comedy is merely opening here to pick up whatever extra coin it can. The film is already close to clearly $100 million overseas so it’s a hit already and whatever it makes domestically is just icing on the cake. I’m calling about $2 million for the opening.
