Saturday AM Update: Refresh for more analysis and chart There’s something interesting here with the overperformance of Universal/Blumhouse/Miramax’s Halloween Kills: the pic, while well ahead of its mid $30Ms-$40M projection, is arguably the highest opening we’ve seen during the pandemic for a theatrical-day-and-date, non-transactional title with $50.16M, the 10th highest for October. This doesn’t include Disney+ Premier fare whereby those subscribers have to fork over an additional $29.99 to watch a title. And all of this bodes well for Warner Bros. and Legendary’s domestic launch of Dune next weekend, also on HBO Max, as a great opening could raise that pic’s profile heading into Oscar season. The big opening here is also a testament to Universal’s big marketing machine to open this film. The pic was blasted through the media conglom’s Symphony program, meaning it’s blitzed throughout all the Comcast NBCUniversal ancillaries, thus creating a situation where tracking was extremely hot well before the move was made to go date and date with this Blumhouse/Miramax sequel.
