In a box office war between a film series that started in the early ’80s and a horror movie set in the early ’80s, audiences chose the latter. Blumhouse broke its streak of 2025 underperformers with Black Phone 2, a chilly story about a top-hat-wearing ghost terrorizing a pair of psychic siblings, which grossed $26 million over the weekend, per The Numbers‘ estimates. It was enough to send Tron: Ares back to cyberspace, as the overdue legacy sequel to a legacy sequel brought in $11 million. Tron declined by 66% in 4,000 theaters, indicating that when audiences picked up the phone, it wasn’t to recommend Tron.
Black Phone benefited from a few things other than Tron fatigue. For one thing, it’s October, and Black Phone is the only horror movie released by a major studio since The Conjuring: Last Rites opened in early September. It’s not that there aren’t other horror movies. Netflix has a Frankenstein that supposedly opened on Friday, too, but good luck finding a theater playing it. Independent releases like Bone Lake and Good Boy have similarly benefitted from the weak field. But it is baffling that no studio bothered to save a horror movie for the Halloween season, especially considering horror’s reliability at the box office. Where’s Art the Clown’s little hat when you need it?
Black Phone 2 also opened ahead of its predecessor. As noted by Variety, the original opened to a much more competitive landscape than the sequel. 2022’s The Black Phone opened at number four, behind Top Gun: Maverick, Elvis, and Jurassic World: Dominion. Only three years later, that looks like a box office from another dimension. Nevertheless, it’s good news for Blumhouse. After enduring flop after flop this year, with Wolf Man, Woman In The Yard, Drop, and M3GAN 2.0 all underperforming, the studio finally has a hit again.
Without the draw of spooky stories to watch in the dark, some moviegoers figured, “Well, angels are sort of like ghosts,” and went to see the Keanu Reeves-led, Aziz Ansari-directed comedy, Good Fortune. Earning $6.2 million, Ansari’s directorial debut has been plagued by bad luck and bad decisions. The film came about after Ansari’s canceled debut, Being Mortal, collapsed when Bill Murray kissed a co-worker through a mask as a funny joke for laughing. Then, two weeks before Good Fortune‘s release, Ansari, who has spent years trying to get back in the public’s good graces after being accused of sexual misconduct, performed at the Riyadh comedy festival and spent the promotional trail explaining himself instead of promoting the movie.
Rounding out the top 5, One Battle After Another brought in another $4 million over the weekend, bringing the movie to a $162 million global haul. However, apparently, $162 million still isn’t enough to make the film profitable. A recent report in Variety claimed the movie now needed to make $300 million to break even. Meanwhile, Roofman rounded out the top five with an additional $3.7 million, bringing the Channing Tatum action dramedy to $15.5 million in two weeks. Though unlike One Battle, Roofman only cost a reported $18 million. Further down the top 10, Luca Guadagnino’s After The Hunt, the movie that dares to ask “has #MeToo gone too far,” collected $1.5 million. The lack of interest from audiences leads us to conclude that the public thinks #MeToo hasn’t gone far enough.
Here’s the full top 10:
- 1) Black Phone 2 ($26.5 million)
- 2) Tron: Ares ($11.14 million)
- 3) Good Fortune ($6.2 million)
- 4) One Battle After Another ($4 million)
- 5) Roofman ($3.7 million)
- 6) Truth & Reason ($2.7 million)
- 7) Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie ($1.6 million)
- 8) The Conjuring: Last Rites ($1.57 million)
- 9) After The Hunt ($1.55 million)
- 10) Demon Slayer ($1.3 million)
