Box Office Hits a 27-Year Low After Major Sci-Fi Franchise Bomb & More Disappointments

by

While October isn’t usually a blockbuster month for movies, it has seen some big successes over the years, like the award-winning film Gravity and the comic book hit Joker. Studios often release important films in October to avoid competing with the many releases during the summer. This year, movies like the sci-fi sequel Tron: Ares and biographical films The Smashing Machine and Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere had potential, but they didn’t perform well in theaters.

As a film buff, I was a little bummed to read in The Hollywood Reporter that October wasn’t a great month for movies at the box office. Total domestic grosses were around $425 million, which is the lowest they’ve been in 27 years – if you don’t count 2020 when everything was shut down because of COVID. Tron: Ares topped the charts, but with only $63.4 million, it actually had the lowest earnings for a number one October film since The Wallace & Gromit Movie back in 2005. It just shows how tough things have been lately!

Why The October Box Office Was So Disappointing

October was a particularly bad month for movies, but it wasn’t entirely unexpected. None of the new releases really captured the public’s interest. Tron: Ares performed as previous films in the series have – receiving mixed reviews and disappointing at the box office, ultimately losing $100 million. The Smashing Machine didn’t generate much positive buzz, earning a mediocre B- CinemaScore and struggling after a weak $6 million opening weekend. This month highlighted just how much moviegoing habits have changed in recent years. With shorter theatrical releases and the popularity of streaming, many viewers are now happy to wait and watch new films at home. Unless a movie is truly exceptional, it’s difficult to get people to go to the theater.

A major movie sequel, Mortal Kombat II, was unexpectedly delayed from October. Warner Bros. decided to push the release to May of next year because their 2025 films were already profitable. Originally planned for October 24th, Mortal Kombat II was expected to be the weekend’s biggest hit. Instead, Chainsaw Man earned $18 million that weekend. The first Mortal Kombat movie, released in 2021 as theaters reopened after the pandemic, debuted with $23.2 million. The sequel, starring Karl Urban, was highly anticipated and likely would have performed very well at the box office.

October is famously known as ‘spooky season,’ and many people get into the Halloween spirit by watching scary movies. However, this year there weren’t many new horror films in theaters. The most successful horror release this month was Black Phone 2, which has made $52.4 million in the US so far. Despite its relatively low $30 million budget, the film is already profitable, though it didn’t become a massive blockbuster like The Conjuring: Last Rites. Surprisingly, there weren’t any new horror movies widely released for Halloween weekend; instead, audiences are mainly seeing a re-release of Kpop Demon Hunters.

Movie theaters have reasons to be hopeful heading into November. The new film Wicked: For Good is expected to be a huge success, potentially earning $115 million in the US during its opening. Disney’s Zootopia 2 is also coming out in November, and the original Zootopia made over $1 billion worldwide. Both of these movies should attract large audiences over Thanksgiving, similar to how Wicked and Moana 2 performed last year. Then, in December, James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash is set to release, and it’s predicted to be one of the year’s biggest films – the previous Avatar movies made over $2 billion combined. If films like Predator: Badlands and The Running Man also do well, it could mean a strong finish to the year for theaters.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!

https://comicbook.com/movies/list/every-tron-movie-ranked-from-worst-to-best/embed/#

Read More

2025-10-31 17:43