Original Coverage & Source Attribution: scottmendelson.substack.com
Two weeks ago, when Street Fighter opened at #1 with $31 million, and You Can See Everything debuted in second place with $15.6 million, I noted that the arbitrary weekend ranking mattered far less than the raw grosses relative to movie-by-movie expectations. And once again, now that Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s Elizabeth Holmes-centric documentary is the weekend’s top movie, I’ll note that again.
Hot by default…
Yes, it’s “neat” that the three-hour, incident-lite (no action, spectacle, fantastical elements, etc.) documentary is the rare wide (or even semi-wide) release to reach the #1 spot in its third weekend. And it’s again bemusing that Halloween weekend is not being led by the various horror movies in the marketplace. But the A24 release is only #1 this weekend, above Clayface, with both films grossing over/under $10.5 million, because the industry more-or-less took the week off.
The overall Fri-Sun totals for this late-October/early-November weekend come to just $62 million, which, to be fair, is +17% from last year’s respective Halloween weekend. Even removing the various years when weekend 44 was the Fall kick-off frame, the 2025 and 2026 spooky season weekend frames are still below any such non-COVID “It’s still Halloween!” weekend 44 since 1998, when John Carpenter’s Vampires debuted at #1 with $9 million amid a $47 million frame.
No excuses…
Given the pesky “Halloween is on a Saturday” variable and what looks like a robust Fall kick-off weekend, I cannot entirely begrudge studios for leaving this weekend mostly lacking in relevant new releases. After all, The Cat in the Hat, Godzilla: Minus Zero, and Ramayana: Part I alone will likely exceed this weekend’s entire domestic cume. That said, plenty of big (gish) movies open just before Fall and don’t fall off a cliff the next weekend.
A distinctly scary movie opening on Halloween weekend probably won’t leg out much, unless you’re the first Saw back in 2004. However, the likes of The Terminator, The Bear, Stargate, K-Pax, Ray, Dan in Real Life, This Is It, Puss in Boots, Nightcrawler and Venom: The Last Dance suggest there’s no such thing as a bad weekend. Of course, most of those movies are of the sort that barely exist in theaters anymore. But that’s… an excuse.
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