Welcome back, Michael Myers
“Halloween” lands at No. 1 at the box office.
LOS ANGELES – Forty years after he first appeared in theaters, Michael Myers is still drawing huge audiences for a good scare.
“Halloween” opened in first place with an estimated $77.5 million in ticket sales from North American theaters, according to studio estimates on Sunday.
It captured the box-office crown with the second-highest horror opening of all time, behind last year’s Stephen King adaptation “It.”
It also marked the second-highest October opening ever behind “Venom’s” $80.3 million launch earlier this month.
Universal says it’s the biggest movie opening ever with a female lead (star Jamie Lee Curtis) over 55.
David Gordon Green directed the “Halloween” sequel, which brings back Curtis as Laurie Strode and Nick Castle in a cameo as Michael Myers, essentially ignoring the events of the other sequels and spinoffs that followed John Carpenter’s 1978 original.
Reviews have been largely positive for the new installment, with an 80 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a B-plus on CinemaScore from audiences that were mostly older (59 percent over 25) and male (53 percent).
Blumhouse, the shop behind “Get Out” and other modestly budgeted horror films, co-produced “Halloween.” It cost only $10 million to make.
“You take the nostalgia for ‘Halloween,’ especially with the return of Jamie Lee Curtis, and you combine that with the Blumhouse brand and its contem- porary currency in the genre, and it just made for a ridiculously potent combination,” says Jim Orr, Universal’s president of domestic distribution.
With 10 days to go until the holiday, including another weekend, the studio expects “Halloween” to enjoy a much longer life than typical horror films.
The film bumped Tom Hardy’s “Venom” into third place in its third weekend in theaters with $18.1 million ($171.1 million total domestically). Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga’s “A Star Is Born” held on to second place in its third weekend with $19.3 million. It was expected to break $200 million worldwide Sunday.
Rounding out the top five: “Goosebumps 2” finished fourth with $9.7 million, and Damien Chazelle’s Neil Armstrong biopic “First Man,” starring Ryan Gosling, fell to fifth with $8.6 million.
Young-adult adaptation “The Hate U Give,” now in 2,300 locations, placed sixth with $7.5 million.
A number of well-received art-house films also made their debuts. At the top was Jonah Hill’s directorial debut “Mid90s,” which opened in four theaters with $249,500 (or a $62,000-plus per-theater average). The Melissa McCarthy film “Can You Ever Forgive Me,” about the literary forger Lee Israel, grossed $150,000 in five locations.
October has never been a particularly strong box-office month, but 2018 has helped change that. The weekend was up nearly 72 percent from the same weekend last October, and the year to date is up nearly 11 percent.
“The industry is on a major roll right now,” says comScore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “You can have your cinematic fast food and fine dining all at once right now.”
Final numbers are expected Monday.