Freaky director slams Halloween Ends hybrid streaming release: "Stop gambling with filmmakers and their movies"

Christopher Landon, who says his film Freaky was "destroyed" after being released on VOD just a few weeks into its theatrical run, is begging studios to stop

By William Hughes | October 15, 2022 | 7:35pm

Aux News halloween

Freaky director slams Halloween Ends hybrid streaming release:

Halloween Ends Screenshot: YouTube

David Gordon Green’s third Halloween movie, Halloween Ends, is now out in front of the viewing public, drawing fairly divisive notices for Green’s complicated, untraditional take on Haddonfield, IL, and its murderous relationship with its least-favorite son. The film is drawing some ire for the release strategy that’s been applied to it, too—which, like last year’s Halloween Kills, sees the movie arrive simultaneously in theaters and on the premium tiers of NBC-affiliated streaming service Peacock.

Specifically, the release plan has drawn angry comments from Happy Death Day and Freaky director Christopher Landon, who knows from disastrous hybrid release plans: Released in the very heart of the pandemic lockdowns—arriving in November of 2020—Freaky was in theaters for only four weeks before being made available on video-on-demand by the studio. Despite getting decent reviews for both its Freaky-Friday-as-a-slasher premise, and for starring performances from Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton, the film was a fairly brutal flop, bringing in just $16 million overall.

Most Popular

Which Landon, offering up a “rant” on Twitter today, points pretty squarely at Universal’s release strategy. “Stop doing this,” he writes, reference the release of both Ends and his own film. “Please. It doesn’t work. Studios: stop gambling with filmmakers and their movies to try and prop up your fledgling streaming services.”

Landon goes on to note that,

This happened to me on Freaky and it destroyed us. We worked SO HARD to make a fun movie. Blood sweat and tears. Months away from our families. And for what? They love to use the term: “two bites of the apple” but that’s just another way of saying “we’re gonna use your movie as a Guinea pig” for our Streaming service. Sorry. I begged the studio not to do this. Either circle the wagons and protect it for theatrical or just go all in on streaming. Don’t split hairs. At least the Halloween folks were made whole. We got hosed. So yeah…bitter subject. PTSD.

Landon ends his comments on a pithy, pissed-off note: “Dear studios: stop trying to suck two dicks at the same time. Honor the sanctity of the theatrical experience.”

It’s worth noting that while Ends isn’t exactly doing poorly this weekend—it’s on track to make about $43 million, against a $30 million budget—it is performing about $10 million under what it was expected to make, with plenty of critics eyeing the simultaneous streaming release as a possible culprit.