Halloween Ends Archives - 45 Lampkin Lane

‘Halloween Ends’ Leads at the Box Office

First up, the good news. This weekend had the best total box office in eight weekends, led by Halloween Ends, which had the best opening in twelve weekends. The weekend was 31% above last weekend and 39% above the average of the past seven weekends.

As for the bad news, the $41.3 million opening of Halloween Ends was well below expectations, and it ranks as the lowest of the new trilogy. The iconic horror franchise was revived by director David Gordon Green in 2018, who brought back Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode. The film was a smash, opening to $76.2 million (still the third best ever for a horror film, and best overall for a slasher) and ultimately grossing $159 million domestically and $255 million worldwide, but the series has been declining since. The sequel Halloween Kills – possibly impacted by a combination of a sophomore slump, pandemic blues, and its availability on the Peacock streaming platform – opened to $49 million and went on to gross $92 million domestically and $132 million worldwide. As Halloween Ends released in a healthier marketplace than a year ago, it was hoped that it would at least match its predecessor.

The new film also received the trilogy’s weakest response from audiences, getting a C+ CinemaScore compared to the B+ on Halloween (2018) and B- on Halloween Kills. Reviews (40% on Rotten Tomatoes) were about on par with Halloween Kills, with both films far below the acclaimed 2018 Halloween (79%). Reviews may not matter here, and a C+ CinemaScore isn’t especially bad for a horror film, but still, there’s nothing here to suggest Halloween Ends won’t repeat Halloween Kills’ legs. If Ends has the same 1.86 multiplier as Kills, that would give it a domestic finish of $76.7 million, less than half the cume of Halloween.

Universal’s decision to release the film on Peacock day and date with its 3,901 theater release may have cost it a good chunk of the potential gross. Still, despite underperforming, the film looks like a moneymaker. It doesn’t have to worry about recouping its reported $20-30 million production budget after the $58.4 million worldwide debut, and it actually did better abroad than Halloween Kills, though these films are fairly domestic heavy. The opening is still the best of the year for a traditional horror film (excluding Jordan Peele’s Nope), and it’s still a strong opening if you put the comparisons and expectations aside.

Article courtesy of Box Office Mojo, with additional editing by 45 Lampkin Lane.

‘Halloween Ends’ Opening Weekend Projected at $43.4 Million

Halloween Ends may be the last we see of Laurie Strode and Michael Myers, but the horror series still kills at the box office. Universal’s slasher finale is off to a strong start, projecting a $43.4 million opening from 3,901 theaters.

Even with Halloween Ends receiving a simultaneous streaming debut on Peacock, the film has managed to draw an impressive figure. Though Ends will debut slightly beneath initial projections, it will earn more than enough to top weekend charts, sparking some life into what has largely been a muted season for moviegoing. In fact, Ends will likely be the first film to open higher than $40 million at the domestic box office since Universal’s Nope nearly three months ago.

Ends is tracking below last year’s predecessor Halloween Kills, which earned a $49 million domestic opening in its own day-and-date release. 2018’s Halloween, the first entry in this new sequel trilogy to John Carpenter’s landmark 1978 original, released exclusively to theaters and garnered a staggering $76 million – the highest domestic debut for a slasher film.

Even with the horror franchise’s sink into diminishing financial returns, Halloween Ends only carries a $20 million production budget, meaning that the film is likely to be well on its way to turning a profit.

Stephen King Comments on ‘Halloween Ends’

Renowned horror author Stephen King took to Twitter yesterday afternoon to offer his personal feedback on Halloween Ends, the polarizing conclusion to Blumhouse’s Halloween trilogy. Elements of the film’s plot have already drawn comparisons to two of King’s most famous novels – It and Christine – and it seems the author was overall impressed by the final product.

https://twitter.com/StephenKing/status/1580658469689884673

Bloody Disgusting & Dread Central Review ‘Halloween Ends’

With its release fast approaching, some initial reviews for Halloween Ends have begun to pop up! The following two are courtesy of Dread Central’s Josh Korngut and Bloody Disgusting’s Meagan Navarro. Check out some excerpts from the reviews below.

From the opening scene of Halloween Ends onward, you can almost feel its creatives attempt to back-pedal on the unpopular choices made in Halloween Kills. While I personally enjoyed the nonsensical parade of silly violence the second Blumhouse installment provided, there’s a good chance my appreciation for that campy and clumsy sequel lays firmly in the minority.
The conclusion to David Gordon Green’s series of Michael Myers titles went back to the drawing board to establish a different, quieter, and weirder tone than either of the previously Jason Blum-backed entries handed over. But it doesn’t work. I believe there is still a fundamental misunderstanding of its intimate suburban source material. From the romantic through-lines to its introduction to new wellsprings of Myers mythology, Halloween Ends drives us as far from away from Carpenter’s Haddonfield as it possibly can. And I’m not sure if that was its intention.
Read the full review at DreadCentral.com

Halloween Ends does live up to its title, but that confrontation gets tacked on to a bizarre new story set four years after Kills.
Since 2018, Michael Myers has disappeared, and his house has been bulldozed to the ground. Laurie finally attempts to move on and find peace. Laurie may be the town’s freak show, but Haddonfield has a new target of scorn in young Corey (Rohan Campbell). Corey’s promising life derailed when, in 2019, a babysitter gig on Halloween night ended in shocking tragedy. The trauma lingering beneath the surface in Haddonfield comes boiling forth, igniting a new chain of violence when Corey crosses paths with Laurie and Allyson.
Writers Paul Brad Logan, Chris Bernier, Danny McBride, and Green frame the trilogy’s conclusion around Corey. It chronicles the inciting event that derailed his life and his present as the browbeaten pariah who can’t catch a break. Through him, Green further explores the overarching themes of infectious, nebulous wrath and evil, and Haddonfield is crueler than ever. Because this is mostly Corey’s story, some of the more established, returning players become nothing more than avatars to Ends’ themes; their personalities shift based on narrative need.
Read the full review at Bloody-Disgusting.com

‘Halloween Ends’ Novelization Confirmed

In keeping with tradition of its predecessors, Halloween Ends is set to release an official novelization just four days after its simultaneous cinema and Peacock™ release!

Written by Paul Brad Logan, one of the film’s screenwriters, the novelization checks in at 368 pages and is once again published by Titan Books.

You can pre-order the novelization at Amazon and other retailers where books are sold.

New ‘Halloween Ends’ Featurette – “Jamie’s Last Stand”

It’s officially Halloween Ends release month, and a brand new featurette – focusing on the one and only Jamie Lee Curtis – has just dropped, alongside a set of exclusive new images courtesy of Bloody Disgusting.

New ‘Halloween Ends’ Featurette – The Final Battle

Following yesterday’s release of the final trailer, a brand new featurette for Halloween Ends has arrived this afternoon, teasing the Final Battle between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers.

“Fans are gonna lose their fucking minds,” Jamie Lee Curtis notes in the new featurette video. Halloween Ends is set four years after the events of Halloween Kills, and Curtis also teases the mindset of Laurie Strode going into this final battle with Michael.

“The 2018 movie and Kills were about a woman who was prepared for Michael. Every day of her life. This is a movie where she’s actually trying to move on. And then Michael comes back.”

“There is a battle,” she adds. “A final reckoning. It’s crazy intense.”

New ‘Halloween Ends’ TV Spot – The Final Reckoning

‘Halloween Ends’ Final Trailer Released

Universal Pictures has released a final trailer for Halloween Ends, which brings the franchise full circle for the alleged final battle between Michael Myers and Laurie Strode.

The new trailer harkens back to John Carpenter’s original Halloween with a handful of shots mirroring the slasher classic, while we also get more Jamie Lee Curtis, who is famously missing from most of Halloween Kills.

The new trilogy is jam-packed with irritating new mythology and this trailer injects a few more morsels, including Laurie’s realization that maybe Michael can’t die unless she does. She also warns that this incarnation of Michael Myers is the most dangerous yet!

This is Laurie Strode’s last stand.
After 45 years, the most acclaimed, revered horror franchise in film history reaches its epic, terrifying conclusion as Laurie Strode faces off for the last time against the embodiment of evil, Michael Myers, in a final confrontation unlike any captured on-screen before. Only one of them will survive.
Icon Jamie Lee Curtis returns for the last time as Laurie Strode, horror’s first “final girl” and the role that launched Curtis’ career. Curtis has portrayed Laurie for more than four decades now, one of the longest actor-character pairings in cinema history. When the franchise relaunched in 2018, Halloween shattered box office records, becoming the franchise’s highest-grossing chapter and set a new record for the biggest opening weekend for a horror film starring a woman.
Four years after the events of last year’s Halloween Kills, Laurie is living with her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) and is finishing writing her memoir. Michael Myers hasn’t been seen since. Laurie, after allowing the specter of Michael to determine and drive her reality for decades, has decided to liberate herself from fear and rage and embrace life. But when a young man, Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell; The Hardy Boys, Virgin River), is accused of killing a boy he was babysitting, it ignites a cascade of violence and terror that will force Laurie to finally confront the evil she can’t control, once and for all.

Halloween Ends – New TV Spot & Three New Images

With the release of Halloween Ends only a month away, Universal has cranked up their promotion. Today, a new TV spot has dropped alongside three exclusive new photos and a brief article from Total Film Magazine.

This year, Halloween Ends. The final installment in the rebooted Halloween trilogy sees the mythical Michael Myers go toe-to-toe with Laurie Strode, and it’s set to be as climactic as you can possibly imagine.

Where the first two films in director David Gordon Green’s series took place, for the most part, over a single day and very long night, with Halloween Kills picking up minutes after Halloween 2018’s fiery finale, trilogy capper Halloween Ends is breaking series convention with a four-year time jump that will bring the action up to the present day, and find the once battle-hardened, emotionally guarded Laurie in a very different place following the death of her daughter at Michael’s hands.

“By the time you meet Laurie Strode, she has gotten help,” Jamie Lee Curtis tells Total Film in the new issue of the magazine, headlined by Halloween Ends (opens in new tab). “Help to process the level of violence that has been perpetrated against her and her family. She’s done the work. And there’s a moment at the beginning of the movie where you actually meet Laurie – I’m not going to say she’s as innocent as she was back when she was a 17-year-old girl – but she has a layer of hope about her. That’s a beautiful place to start a really tragic, incredibly violent ending.”

Laurie and Allyson are living together when we’re reacquainted with the surviving Strodes, and “have a good relationship” according to Matichak, having dealt with their “shared trauma and loss together”, though Allyson hasn’t committed to the work quite as wholeheartedly as Laurie. For Green, the opportunity to evolve and even reinvent well-established characters was a key reason to move the story forward in such drastic fashion. But there’s a big question the time jump inevitably raises: where has Michael been for the last four years?

Green bluntly acknowledges, “We don’t really explain that,” arguing, as with all things Myers, that the mystery is better left intact. “It’s like: I don’t want to see where Jaws goes to sleep at night when I’m watching a shark movie,” the director says. “I want to see him when he pops up, and he’s got an appetite!”

That’s just a taster of the Halloween feature in the new issue of Total Film, which is on newsstands this Thursday – while subscribers have their copies now! Order your copy of Total Film here (opens in new tab) or subscribe to Total Film here (opens in new tab) and never miss another issue. You can currently grab three issues for just £3!