The Disappointing Halloween Season: A Closer Look at Movie Studios’ Failures – Update

I imagine there’s a very small group of people who are intensely looking forward to the release of Countdown, the horror movie about a killer app. I repeat: the horror movie about a killer app. Every piece of new-ish technology somehow needs to kill annoying teenagers in a movie. But I think I speak for a large majority of people when I say: where the hell is our marquee horror film in October?

Obviously, October is prime real estate for studios itching to make a profit on horror properties, although this is also the time of the year when studios start to release their flashy, possibly Oscar-contending fare. It’s on all our minds, whether we’re planning our own marathon of horror classics or a trip to the theaters. Or at least that’s normally the case – Hollywood seems to be bypassing the yearly tradition altogether.

2019 is the first year this decade without a major horror release of some kind. A year without a large studio releasing an original, high-profile scary movie or one that belongs to some sort of franchise lineage. We’ve had our share of horror-adjacent movies – properties that have macabre sensibilities but aren’t true examples of the genre – such as The Addams Family, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, and Zombieland: Double Tap, but not a true scarefest that many fans crave.

A notable horror player that is confusingly absent from the season is Jason Blum, the leader of Blumhouse Productions and the master of low-budget moneymakers. After entrenching themselves in the industry with the Paranormal Activity series, Blumhouse has feasted on making genre movies on the cheap that have widespread appeal. It’s a low risk, high reward business plan every single time. Which makes it even more curious is that they’ve decided to skip the festivities this year despite their incredible recent success, illustrated in the graphic below:

Plenty of other studios have taken a crack at releasing thriller or horror films in October, with overwhelmingly positive results. Other than Ouija, 2014 saw the release of movies such as Gone Girl and Annabelle. Both saw tremendous returns, with Gone Girl earning $369.3 million worldwide (David Fincher’s highest grossing movie to date) and Annabelle taking home $257 million. Jigsaw (2017), Saw 3D (2010), and Carrie (2013) are also high-profile financial successes within the last decade.

Before we venture forward, let’s make something abundantly clear: these films aren’t all necessarily “good” in the classical sense. Have you seen Ouija? (If you haven’t, good for you). Rather, they provide an outlet for horror junkies to get their quota of necessary scares and adrenaline rushes, a necessary part of any Halloween season.

In reality, the highly varying degree of quality paired with a fairly stable level of success makes it even more perplexing that all major studios have stayed away this season, paving the way for Countdown to become a box office success out of sheer horror scarcity.

However, that’s not to say that it’s a full-proof system. Crimson Peak (2015) and The Thing (2011) are two major releases from this decade that were fairly underwhelmingly financially. Still, no matter the quality or the box office receipts of the October horror movies this decade, there was a clear effort made by Hollywood in years passed to “eventize” Halloween in some shape or fashion. Our only hope this year is a PG-13 horror film released by STX Entertainment, whose last attempt at horror was The Bye Bye Man back in 2017. And did I mention that Countdown is about a killer app?

This year, Blumhouse moved their standard October release date to December with their version of Black Christmas, the second remake of the 1974 film of the same name. We’ll have to wait until 2020 and 2021 for Blumhouse to return to the scary holiday with Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends.

However, the real issue at hand is actually overcrowding, ironically brought on in large part by the master of horror himself, Stephen King. IT was one of the more surprising smash hits of the decade back in 2017, and every other studio made sure to steer clear of IT Chapter Two’s release back in September.

Although IT Chapter Two shared a similar release of the first weekend in September, a date that appears to be far enough away from Halloween for another horror movie to debut without fear of cannibalization, IT did not leave the top five at the box office until midway through October of 2017. Fearing that IT Chapter Two would eat up all the late summer and early fall box office, studios were clearly cautious with their own slates. Surprisingly, Countdown is the first horror movie since IT Chapter Two to have a wide release.

But what portends to be the big horror event of the season is undoubtedly Doctor Sleep, the follow-up to the The Shining based on King’s book of the same name from director Mike Flanagan, the man behind adaptation of King’s Gerald’s Game as well as Ouija: Origin of Evil and a few other very solid horror outings. Doctor Sleep won’t go wide until November 8th. Although, in a savvy business decision, Warner Bros. will be releasing the film in a few theaters on October 30th as part of a special event, leading audiences straight into Halloween after those night screenings finish up. I consider this a smart move because, well, it’s only direct competition during this time is a movie about a killer app.

Logistically, the November 8th release for Doctor Sleep makes a lot of sense. Terminator: Dark Fate will be hitting multiplexes the week before which, despite the ever-declining standard that the franchise continues to set for itself, looks to be on its way to a very respectable opening weekend. Instead of releasing the weekend before Dark Fate and having its box office legs taken right out from under it, Doctor Sleep will have many weeks of play in theaters without a large-scale film swallowing up all possible profits. Dark Fate will still be around, but it will have most likely made a large chunk of its domestic intake in the days leading up to Doctor Sleep.

Another item to note is that the Terminator franchise has slowly morphed into an international product over time as Terminator: Genisys earned almost 80% of its overall cume (cumulative audience) from international markets. Along with declining interest in the states, this mostly has to do with James Cameron’s involvement, who is a very popular film figure abroad, and also Paramount’s partnership with Tencent, the massive Chinese conglomerate company that has become more and more important to studios looking for profits in Asia. Horror, on the other hand, is almost always more fruitful domestically, so staying away from Dark Fate’s opening weekend is incredibly wise.

Following Dark Fate, we won’t have a true blockbuster until December 13th when Jumanji: The Next Level arrives. Doctor Sleep will be able to stay on more screens longer while not going up against direct competition from another horror movie until Black Christmas also debuts on December 13th. In most years, Doctor Sleep would most likely have been the horror event of October. It’s a pity that such a confluence of events kept what appears to be an inventive, epic adaptation away from the spooky festivities. How anticlimactic is it that studios are diminishing Halloween due to scheduling conflicts?

Studios failed us this year, but that doesn’t mean that Halloween 2019 is for nothing. Stay home and create a horror marathon for yourself. Go to midnight screenings of horror masterpieces and camp classics alike. Or, you could go see a movie about a killer app. I trust you’ll make the right decision.

MORE HORROR:
– 15 Best Horror Movies On Shudder For Halloween 2019
– 70 Best Modern Horror Movies of the 21st Century
– 10 Best Horror Movies of the 2010s