Credit: Halloween Ends
When news surfaced that the David Gordon Green sequel would be doing a day-and-date release with Peacock, immediately, fans worried that Halloween Ends was terrible. The day-and-date release strategy proved to be a failure when HBO Max did the exact same thing in 2021, so it made no sense why Blumhouse wanted to ruin the film’s potential profit by putting it on Peacock. Of course, the new streaming service is still struggling, so it makes sense for them that this deal is happening, though going back to HBO Max, barely any new customers signed up for the streaming service, so going this route won’t likely see Peacock become the No. 1 network in terms of customers.
News about Halloween Ends only got worse when it was revealed that the feature wouldn’t open the review embargo until hours before its official release. Unfortunately, the forecasting about Halloween End‘s review came true, though the film did better than it could’ve gotten. Originally, Green set out to make a trilogy of Halloween films that focused on one single night; however, the director ultimately decided to change the direction when the pandemic locked everyone down in the world in 2020.
Credit: Halloween Ends
Halloween Ends was a stark contrast from the retconned 2018 film and Kills, and both fans and critics were soundly scratching their heads over why the filmmaker changed his tune on the final film in the trilogy. Despite the negative feedback from fans, Green defends the final film on Moviemaker, even though Halloween Ends is truly a Laurie Strode or Michael Myers story:
“We had to decide how we wanted to wrap up these characters. How do we want to make it not just a nice, neat bow on a franchise? Honestly, we never once considered making a Laurie and Michael movie. the concept that it should be a final showdown-type brawl never even crossed our minds. I wanted to see where it would go. I wanted one to win, one to die. But we were always more ambitious with that. So how did we want to go out? By doing what no one except us would do: make a love story. It’s our version of going out with a bang and opening our hearts to this community and these characters.”
Credit: Halloween Ends
It’s good to see that Green is happy with the final product, but the issue is that this entire reboot was supposed to be Laurie Strode vs. Michael Myers. Halloween and Halloween Kills certainly built up to the final confrontation between the two legacy characters, and the trailers purposely focused on the last battle between Michael and Laurie. It’s one thing to craft your own vision that’s different from what the fans expect; however, it’s another when the movies are pretty much promising one thing, and it deviates from what audiences were truly clamoring for. Fans were clearly disappointed as Halloween Ends suffered a jaw-dropping 80% in its second weekend.
Though it opened lower than projections of $50.35 plus million, Halloween Ends still came out strong with $41.3 million in the first weekend. However, the signs for a steep drop were all there. Halloween Kills, another controversial film fans didn’t particularly like, opened strong with $50 million, but audiences simply weren’t happy with the end result. It dropped a huge 71% the following weekend, and it ultimately made $131.6 million, but that’s over $100 million less than the 2018 reboot.
Of course, putting the feature on Peacock on the same day takes away from some of the box office totals, but films like The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It and Dune managed to make over $200 million despite being saddled with the HBO Max day-and-date release strategy, so that excuse just isn’t fully the reason for the huge drop. The film has made over $80 million worldwide so it’ll likely make over $100 million, but this is still a disappointing end to what started out as a strong return to form back in 2018.
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