October 2025 Box Office Crashes to 28-Year Low as Halloween Weekend Hits Rock Bottom
October 2025 will go down as one of the bleakest months Hollywood has seen in nearly three decades. The domestic box office brought in just $425 million, marking the lowest October haul since 1997, not counting the pandemic shutdowns of 2020. Halloween weekend itself was the weakest of the entire year, pulling in only $49 million.
To put that in perspective, the last time numbers were this low, audiences were packing theaters for I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Devil’s Advocate starring Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves, and Kiss the Girls. Those films helped October 1997 bring in $385 million, and that was nearly 30 years ago.
While the month wasn’t a total disaster, the hits were few and far between. The new anime feature Chainsaw Man: The Movie – Reze Arc was one of the only bright spots, slicing through the competition to top the U.S. box office in late October.
It managed to outperform other new releases like Shelby Oaks and Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, proving anime fans still show up for awesome big screen events.
Unfortunately, one success story wasn’t enough to save the month. The Smashing Machine, the much-hyped sports biopic starring Dwayne Johnson, fell flat with the lowest opening of Johnson’s career.
Meanwhile, Disney’s big sci-fi gamble Tron: Ares is shaping up to be a massive loss for the studio, with projections estimating over $130 million in losses.
Box office analyst Jeff Bock told Variety: “The major releases this month failed to deliver. Simple as that. Apart from the moderately successful Black Phone 2, there just weren’t enough horror films to entice moviegoers. That should be a no-brainer.”
October is traditionally horror’s playground, but this year offered little to scream about. Fans looking for frights were limited to Black Phone 2 and Shelby Oaks, while bigger genre titles like Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 and Scream 7 are waiting in the wings for their winter debuts.
So what went wrong? A mix of weak releases, franchise fatigue, uninteresting films, and questionable scheduling seems to have drained October of its usual Halloween energy. With streaming competition stranger than ever and audiences growing choosier, studios might want to rethink how they program spooky season.
If there’s any silver lining, it’s that November has a packed slate that could help turn things around, but after this October slump, Hollywood has a long way to climb to get audiences back in their seats.