LOS ANGELES -- Forty years after he first appeared in theaters, Michael Myers is still drawing huge audiences for a good scare.
Universal Pictures said Sunday that Halloween took in an estimated $77.5 million in ticket sales from North American theaters.
It captured first place at the box office with the second-highest horror opening of all time, behind last year's It.
It also marked the second highest October opening ever behind Venom's $80.3 million premiere earlier this month.
The studio also says it's the biggest movie opening ever with a female lead older than 55, with star Jamie Lee Curtis.
Little Rock native David Gordon Green directed Halloween, which brings back Curtis as Laurie Strode, and Nick Castle as Michael Myers and essentially ignores the events of the myriad sequels and spinoffs aside from John Carpenter's original.
Blumhouse, the shop behind Get Out and numerous other modestly budgeted horror films, co-produced Halloween with Miramax. It cost only $10 million to make.
"You take the nostalgia for Halloween, especially with the return of Jamie Lee Curtis, and you combine that with the Blumhouse brand and its contemporary currency in the genre and it just made for a ridiculously potent combination at the box office this weekend," said Jim Orr, Universal's president of domestic distribution.
With a few days to go until the holiday, including another weekend the studio expects Halloween to enjoy a much longer life than typical horror films that usually drop off significantly after the first weekend.
"The debut for Halloween is exhilarating," Orr said. "And a testament to the really incredible job that the filmmakers did, the talent involved, led by Curtis ... combine that with our best in industry marketing publicity and that came together to really make Halloween a social event at the domestic box office."
The movie, which was co-written by Green, actor Danny McBride and their Vice Principals collaborator Jeff Fradley, earned positive reviews from audiences and critics with a B-plus rating on CinemaScore and a 80 percent "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a rare feat for a slasher flick.
Orr, who credits the resurgence of the horror genre to Blumhouse, could not say definitively whether there would be sequels to come. Internationally, Halloween earned $14.3 million from 23 markets.
Halloween was enough to bump the comic-book film Venom out of the No. 1 spot and into third place. In its third weekend in theaters, it collected $18.1 million, bringing its domestic total to $171.1 million.
Meanwhile A Star Is Born held on to second place in its third weekend with $19.3 million. The Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga drama has grossed $126.4 million from North American theaters and is cruising to break $200 million worldwide by Sunday.
Damien Chazelle's Neil Armstrong bio-pic First Man tumbled to fifth place in its second weekend, earning $8.6 million, down 46 percent from its launch.
It was a particularly busy week at the box office as critically acclaimed films such as the young adult adaptation The Hate U Give and the Robert Redford acting swan song The Old Man & The Gun expanded nationwide after a few weeks in limited release.
In contrast, the wide expansion of Annapurna's The Sisters Brothers into 1,012 additional theaters (1,141 total) fell flat, with just $742,014 grossed, a pitiful per-screen average of $650. The film has earned $2 million in five weeks, and it adds to the recent run of troubles Annapurna has experienced as the prestige production company attempts to build up its distribution arm.
Despite modest success this summer with the Sundance acquisition Sorry to Bother You, Annapurna has seen more disappointing results from movies, including last year's Detroit and Professor Marston and the Wonder Women. The studio will next release Barry Jenkins' much lauded Moonlight follow-up, If Beale Street Could Talk, Adam McKay's Dick Cheney bio-pic Vice and the Nicole Kidman vehicle Destroyer.
In another sign of how the current glut of sophisticated titles for adults is leaving some pictures out in the cold, Fox's Bad Times at the El Royale experienced a fairly sizable drop of 54 percent in its second weekend. The ensemble period thriller, a film that is difficult to categorize and not based on any pre-existing material, took in $3.3 million in its second weekend to land at No. 9. Writer-director Drew Goddard's movie has grossed $13.3 million domestically to date.
In limited release, A24's Mid90s, directed by Jonah Hill, opened in four theaters to an impressive $249,500 and a per-screen average of $62,375. That's the third highest opening weekend average of the year following National Geographic's breakout documentary Free Solo and A24's own coming-of-age title Eighth Grade.
The Hate U Give, now in 2,303 locations, placed sixth with $7.5 million, and The Old Man & The Gun took 10th with $2.1 million from 802 locations.
The Melissa McCarthy film Can You Ever Forgive Me, about the literary forger Lee Israel, grossed $150,000 in five locations.
October has never been a particularly strong box office month, but 2018 has helped to change that. The weekend was up nearly 72 percent from the same weekend last October and the year to date is up nearly 11 percent.
Note: The Top 20, compiled by The Associated Press, does not appear this week.
MovieStyle on 10/26/2018