Terminator: Dark Fate began its franchise resurgence last night in previews and pulled in impressive numbers considering its preview night fell on Halloween.
Terminator: Dark Fate grossed $2.4 million from 7:00 PM shows on Halloween night. The gross is on par with the Tuesday night preview numbers Terminator: Genisys which made $2.3 million back on June 30, 2015. Keep in mind, Genisys launched during the summer and Dark Fate launched on Halloween night. Halloween is usually only good to horror films and sometimes family fare so Dark Fate’s preview gross is good considering Halloween isn’t too kind to films outside of certain genres.
Typically Terminator movies play the July 4th spread, opening mid-week and racking up a five-seven day run. Terminator Salvation was the only movie to play the Memorial Day weekend period in 2009. The last time a Terminator film opened over a pure 3-day weekend, like Dark Fate, is the original film back in 1984 so it makes comparing the starts a bit tricky. Let’s just say that, considering the preview launched on Halloween, I’m giving Dark Fate an early win but we’ll have to see how the weekend plays out.
Harriet also premiered in Thursday night previews with $600,000 that began at 7:00 PM. The real money for Harriet starts today as older moviegoers will begin attending. Another older-skewing film, Motherless Brooklyn, did not play in previews last night and begins its run today.
