“Last weekend’s lineup was so great, we did it twice,” jokes Richard Rushfield.
With Halloween falling on a Friday this year, plus Games 6 and 7 of the World Series arriving at the same time (go Dodgers), the industry’s brave studios released zero new movies — a perfect send-off to what is now the worst October since Sean McNulty was in college.
“To totally disregard a weekend is sad,” Sean notes. Weekend Halloweens have a bad track record at the box office, but “there’s also something to being the [studio that says], ‘Well, if no one else is going to step up, it’s a wide open slot for me to have all the oxygen in the room.’”
But the real losers here aren’t the absent studios or the Toronto Blue Jays; instead, it’s the theater owners who need to pay rent, and whose survival hinges on Hollywood’s ability to dole out releases consistently. “There will be a real reckoning for this if it doesn’t change,” Richard warns.
Elsewhere in this discussion: Regretting You and Black Phone 2 battle for top honors, as the Blumhouse horror sequel gets in the profitability range; Chainsaw Man’s decent hold, and how Sony learned to leverage Crunchyroll for theatrical anime; and what to expect next week from — finally — a new wide release with muscle: Disney’s Predator: Badlands.
