Halloween Was The Worst Weekend At The Box Office Of 2025 So Far - What Happened?

Halloween 2025 is in the rearview mirror and, for anyone who happens to own a movie theater, it's a real good riddance moment. That's because the Halloween frame went down as the worst weekend at the box office this year thus far. With almost nothing new worthy of drawing a crowd, theaters were left fighting for scraps, with All Hallows's Eve overshadowing anything that was up on the silver screen.

In its second weekend, "Regretting You" took the number one spot domestically with an estimated $8.1 million haul, narrowly edging out "Black Phone 2" with $8 million in the number two spot on its third weekend. The entire domestic box office totaled less than $49 million over Halloween weekend, a new low point for 2025. That beat out a weekend in March when the Jack Quaid-starring "Novocaine" led the pack with less than $9 million, though that frame's domestic total was just shy of $52 million. That's slightly better, but it's still pretty terrible.

There were virtually no new marquee releases to try and lure in audiences, with Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone's latest acclaimed collaboration, "Bugonia," expanding wide and pulling in just $4.8 million against a reported $45 million budget. That's not a good result for Focus Features, and it lost out to last week's champion "Chainsaw Man — The Movie: Reze Arc," which added $6.2 million to its total.

Meanwhile, Netflix's "KPop Demon Hunters" got another limited run, bringing in an estimated $5.3 million to come in fourth place. Elsewhere, "Back to the Future" placed at number six with $4.7 million for its 40th anniversary. That certainly helped, but only so much. Globally, it wasn't much better, as "Chainsaw Man" was the top movie with another $12.5 million internationally. It was bad all around.

The only true-blue new wide release was the animated "Stitch Head" from Briarcliff Entertainment, which pulled in a mere $2.1 million, landing at number nine. It placed behind "Tron: Ares" ($2.8 million) and above "Good Fortune" ($1.4 million), which rounded at the top 10. Mind you, "Tron: Ares" is already one of the biggest flops of the year and "Good Fortune" has proven to be a grave disappointment. The industry at large had nothing to celebrate as we headed into November.

One of the biggest issues is that October was record-breaking bad for the box office, with flops left and right leaving theaters without any reliable holdovers come time for Halloween. Since studios didn't want to risk releasing any big titles, it resulted in nothing shy of a trainwreck.

We knew it was going to be bad since 2025 is the first time Halloween has fallen on a Friday since 2014, which is a curse for the box office. On that particular weekend 11 years ago, "Ouija" took the number one spot with a mere $10.7 million, with Jake Gyllenhaal's thriller "Nightcrawler" opening to $10.4 million. The catch? The domestic weekend still managed $95 million overall. That's nearly double what theaters got this year.

The bigger problem is that moviegoing habits remain irreparably changed in the aftermath of theaters shutting down for months on end in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The market's recovery has been slower than expected, and it's now believed that the global box office may never fully recover. This past weekend served as major evidence of that. Casual moviegoing helped make that weekend in 2014 a bummer but not a total disaster. It all looks very different more than a decade removed.

While theaters can't continue to have too many weekends like this after enduring a pandemic and dual Hollywood strikes in 2023, there is at least some reason to be hopeful. For one, after "Black Phone 2" posted a strong $27.3 million opening in late October, it crossed the $100 million mark globally over the weekend. It's now by far Blumhouse's biggest hit of 2025.

Similarly, though it's still absolutely a flop, Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another" added another $6.1 million globally in its sixth frame. It's now at $191 million worldwide and figures to make it to $200 million before all's said and done, with a lot of awards season love on the table as well. The over/under $140 million budget is still kneecapping this one for Warner Bros., but a big movie for adults is getting people out to theaters. It's a heavily qualified win of sorts, at least.

Looking ahead, November seems extremely promising and should bring much greener pastures. "Wicked: For Good" is eyeing at least a $112 million domestic opening, with lots of room for that number to grow between now and the actual release. The month will also see the likes of "Predator: Badlands," "The Running Man," "Keeper," "Now You See Me: Now You Don't," and "Zootopia 2," among others, hopefully putting lots of butts in seats.

So yes, the immediate future looks brighter, but that's of little comfort to anyone trying to keep the lights on at their local theater in the here and now. Here's hoping that this was just an irregular bump in the road. A big, scary bump, but a bump nonetheless.