As Halloween draws near, the UK box office is set for an influx of spooky tales.
Sony Pictures is hoping Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween will attract those looking for a family-friendly scare. The previous feature adaptation of the book franchise – the Jack Black-starring Goosebumps – opened with £2.7m for Sony in 2016 and closed on £9m.
Black has a smaller role in the sequel and is not fronting the marketing campaigns this time out. Reviews have been middling, so repeating the numbers of its predecessors could be a tough ask. In the US, the film was released last weekend, opening with $15m – so a £1.5m bow in the UK would be considered a similar result.
On the more adult side of the spectrum is Universal’s Halloween reboot, in which Jamie Lee Curtis reprises a role she first played in 1978, this time for Blumhouse Productions and director David Gordon Green.
There have been a multitude of previous entries in the Halloween franchise released in the UK, the most successful of which is Halloween: H20 (1998) which took £3.3m. The latest film will be hoping to set a new benchmark.
An alternative pre-Halloween release this week Matteo Garrone’s Dogman – via Curzon Artificial Eye - not a horror film but certainly characterised by director Garrone signature dark and bleak eeriness. The Italian seaside town-set film was a hit in Cannes this year, where it picked up the best actor prize for star Marcello Fonte.
Also new on release this week is Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9, via Vertigo, the director’s latest politically-charged documentary. It looks at the 2016 United States presidential election and the subsequent presidency of Donald Trump.
Lionsgate will be putting out Hunter Killer, the latest Gerard Butler-fronted action film, in which an untested US submarine captain teams with US Navy Seals to rescue the Russian president.
Dogwoof has Science Fair, a doc about the quest of nine high school students attempting to win the international science fair, MUBI is putting out Adina Pintilie’s Berlin Golden Bear winner Touch Me Noti, while Trafalgar is doing a one-day event release of Samons Et Dalila from the Met Opera’s 2018 programme, and Eros International is releasing Hindi romantic comedy Namastey England.
Key holdovers include Warner Bros’ A Star Is Born, which shot to the top of the chart last week with a fantastic 0% drop on its first weekend, Sony’s Venom, Universal’s Johnny English Strikes Again and First Man, and Phoenix Productions’ Polish-language Clergy (Kier), which last week set a record by posting the highest-ever opening for a Polish film.
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