Halloween Kills released on Friday both in theaters and on Peacock, and absolutely dominated at the box office with a $55 million take. Most of it came from North America and its love for Jamie Lee Curtis and John Carpenter, and the $50 million debut came above original expectations.
People seemed to ditch the at home experience in place for theaters..
Lorne Michaels.. head in hands.. looking at these latest ratings. But perhaps he’d be better wondering if the funny is just not funny.
There has been this common consensus lately that “comedy” does not need to equal laughs, just social lessons.
Ratings tell a different story..
Last night’s telecast of Saturday Night Live with host Rami Malek and musical guest Young Thug drew a 3.4 household Live + Same Say rating in the 44 metered local markets and 1.3 in 18-49 in the 25 markets with local people meters.
That was down last week’s show, hosted by Kim Kardashian West with musical guest Halsey (3.8, 1.6). Last night’s telecast, which featured surprise appearances by Malek’s No Time To Die co-star Daniel Craig, matched the all-time demo low in the LPM markets posted by the last two episodes of SNL’s Season 46 as well as the Season 47 premiere two weeks ago. It set a new low in metered market households.
In other words.. few are watching besides the clips on Youtube..
Not ready for prime time … times more.
The Halloween mood has set into the box office..
James Bond pic ‘No Time to Die’ while Ridley Scott’s historical epic ‘The Last Duel’ is bombing in its debut..
Enter Michael Myers..
At this point, even with the Peacock release along with theaters, the newest inception into the foray of Halloween flicks is set to debut at $50 mil or more; Quite the success story given some spate of negative reviews from critics. Movie goers have set into two camps: LOVE OR HATE. Very few happy mediums..
The bloodiest installment yet imagines a world where Halloween 2 never occurred, so neither did any other.. The opening sequence provides a beautifully made 1978 flashback scene that would theoretically show us what the Shape did after he escapes Dr. Loomis’ gunfire.. This film even includes a Loomis lookalike to ad the ambiance to to the scene. When we fast forward to the modern times, Michael escapes a fire and murders fire fighters. the elderly.. anyone else who accidentally gets in his way. The trail of blood is long and cruel in HALLOWEEN KILLS..
Well..
The name is Halloween Kills.. so that.
Filmmaker David Gordon Green’s R-rated slasher pic earned $22.9 million on Friday from 3,705 theaters in North America for a projected $50 million weekend. Halloween Kills also launched Friday on Universal’s sister streaming service Peacock.
What is interesting is that it is not just the nostalgia seekers going to HALLOWEEN KILLS.. According to exit polls, Halloween Kills is being fueled by younger consumers — 73 percent of Friday ticket buyers were 35 and under — and a diverse audience..
Jamie Lee Curtis used the opening success to brag a bit on Instagram about the achievement:
WE DIDN’T SUCK! What you don’t know about me is that I am incredibly competitive and yet always underplay expectations. Always have. I hide expectations and couch them behind the belief that the process is what is most important but at the end of the day you still want it to be successful for myriad reasons. Mostly for the fans and then the studio, the creative teams and all the hard work that people put into it.
When Freaky Friday started its release and everybody said it would do well I remember simply saying to everyone involved “I hope we don’t suck.” When that movie reached $100 million I had T-shirts made for all of us that said “we didn’t suck.”I think I may need to be getting some new T-shirts made for my Halloween family.
Happy Halloween!
OFFICIAL NUMBERS COMING SUNDAY, BLOODY SUNDAY..
Gabby Petito died by strangulation at least three weeks before her remains were found, a Wyoming coroner said Tuesday, as a nationwide manhunt persisted for the woman’s missing fiancé.
The Long Island woman’s body was discovered on Sept. 19 at the Spread Creek Dispersed Camping Area in Bridger-Teton National Forest, and Teton County Coroner Dr. Brent Blue had previously ruled her death a homicide.
Clerk Kent and Lois Lane’s son may not have secrets he wants revealed. But his sexual preference is front and center in a new Marvel generation..
That same-sex relationship is just one of the ways that Jonathan Kent, who goes by Jon, is proving to be a different Superman than his famous father. Since his new series, Superman: Son of Kal-El, began in July, Jon has combated wildfires caused by climate change, thwarted a high school shooting and protested the deportation of refugees in Metropolis.
“The idea of replacing Clark Kent with another straight white savior felt like a missed opportunity,” Tom Taylor, who writes the series, said in an interview. He said that a “new Superman had to have new fights — real world problems — that he could stand up to as one of the most powerful people in the world.”
Some residents wondered if a meteorite or an aircraft might be behind the mystery, one that generated some complaints next door in Massachusetts.
Dan Brian said that he was at home in New Boston, N.H., which is about 20 miles northwest of Nashua, N.H., sipping kombucha and playing a video game with his wife when he heard what he thought was a large explosion.
“There was a kind of a loud boom that rattled our whole house,” Mr. Brian said on Sunday. “It had like an audible boom to it. It was very strange. That’s why everyone thought it was like an explosion at first.”
— Read on dnyuz.com/2021/10/10/something-shook-new-hampshire-what-caused-the-boom-is-a-mystery/
The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association’s filing Friday also asked for an immediate hearing on the request before a federal court in Dallas, claiming the carrier has continued to take unilateral actions that violate terms of the Railway Labor Act, which governs airline-union relations. Those steps include the Covid-19 vaccination requirement.
“The new vaccine mandate unlawfully imposes new conditions of employment and the new policy threatens termination of any pilot not fully vaccinated by December 8, 2021,” the legal filing said. “Southwest Airlines’ additional new and unilateral modification of the parties’ collective bargaining agreement is in clear violation of the RLA.”
— Read on www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/southwest-air-pilots-seek-to-block-covid-vaccination-mandate/ar-AAPjkrB
Every year, without a beat, we know it’s the Halloween season when we see the local vacant store front get its Spirit Halloween sign!
Yes, indeed, it starts around August.. vacant former Sears, KMarts, and stores of your past come to life with seasonal decor, frightful costumes, and that autumnal annual feeling of Halloween.
Year after year, Spirit Halloween stores seem to not only be the harbinger of the season, but also they inhabit more retail as times goes on. As of 2021, they are now 1,400 stores strong nationwide!
A recent NPR article showcased just how interesting their business model is.
Perhaps above all, Spirit’s business model hinges on space. Lots of it. Spirit looks for anywhere between 5,000 and 50,000 square feet of space, but in the company’s own words, “no store is too large (or too small)” — and the company has no problem finding the space it needs. Drop any ZIP code or address into the company’s store locator, and a flurry of orange arrows is almost sure to pop up. The company finds this space largely in abandoned buildings — malls that have shut down, retailers that have filed for bankruptcy and so on. “Spirit is pretty much a bottom-feeder business that works only at the expense of other stores; if there weren’t vacant storefronts, this business wouldn’t exist,” writes Rachel Quednau, program director for Strong Towns, an urban planning advocacy group that emphasizes incremental city planning.
Bottom feeders!
But with such splendor!
The 1,400 stores strong (and quite the reputation) shows how good they are at what they do. From January to August, the company spends its time scouring the country and scoping out properties for temporary leases.
So here are some interesting facts to consider this year when you enter the dreadful Spirit Halloween store.
It wasn’t at first even a Halloween store at all!
Spirit Women’s Discount Apparel was the first business venture from California entrepreneur Joe Marver. When he noticed how much success the costume shop next door was having around Halloween, he decided to swap his regular apparel for costumes for a limited time in 1983.
Sales were great, and the next year, he opened his first pop-up Spirit Halloween shop, which brought in $100,000 worth of revenue in just one month.
In the 1990s, Spencers entered the fray.. Spencer Gifts entered the Halloween market. The retailer purchased Spirit Halloween in 1999 when the pop-up chain consisted of around 60 temporary locations. By Halloween 2018, Spencer’s had grown the operation to more than 1300 stores in the U.S. and Canada.
Spirit Halloween donates tons of money to charity.. they help with retail hell, and they are also able to bring life to once darkened malls and stores. We should rejoice in their power! They are retail at its finest.. sure it may be fine to order your costume on Amazon, but somehow, someway, the Spirit begins with the Spirit Halloween store visit.
That is pretty cool considering retail has been dead for years.
Except on Halloween..
Except in the Spirit store..
And what a mistake it would have been for the streaming service if that is close to true!
The words came from actor David Harbour at COMIC CON in New York..
Some headlines of course may be a little more animated than necessary.. this was small town from the actor and an interesting story. Netflix probably was not really going to bury the show..
x x x
While appearing at a panel during New York Comic Con on Saturday, the Black Widow actor said he was going to “throw Paul Wesley under the bus” with a revelation from one of their past conversations.
“So about two weeks before the show I was like, ‘There’s still no ads, man, like buses and phone, there’s no ads,’ and he [Paul] was like, ‘Sorry man, they’re trying to bury it.’ It was clearly a terrible show,” Harbour revealed to NYCC attendees.
After that conversation with The Vampire Diaries star, Harbour told the audience a sense of panic started to set in.
“I was like, ‘Oh no, man. I blew it. I had like one of the leads on a Netflix show, and I blew it, we all blew it,’” recalled Harbour.
“I think one of the things that people love about it, and it’s so hard to have in today’s culture, is you discovered it,” said Harbour. “I mean, like, you didn’t hear much about it, and you just sort of were playing around on Netflix and … people were like, ‘Oh this looks kind of good,’ and there was a sense of discovery about it. That was brilliant.”
“I mean, the funny thing about us is that the whole thing has changed so much, right? And yet when we get together on set, it’s like the first day of the first season, where they’re afraid of me because I’m an angry New York actor, and they’re little kids,” Harbour told the crowd. “So that has been preserved.”
“And I think we all have that relationship where we’ve been [through] so much that when we get on set together, it still feels like day one. It still feels very creative,” he continued. “The hoopla around us when we step off that stage is insane … but for those kids … what I do like is that they are grounded enough to be [the same] when we are on set working on the show.”
“Everybody loves the show still,” Harbour added. “We love the creators and we love our characters, and we love each other and we feel like a family. We could have big special effects and all that stuff, but we’d miss that thing that to me is really what the show is about. So that’s very much preserved.”
Perhaps if the show was named something else, Netflix however would have buried it.. David Harbour, who signed to play Hopper when the show was going to be called Montauk, initially hated the new title Stranger Things and begged the Duffers to change it.
Another Halloween season is here, and with it comes the traditional photo of my son in front of the Ferris wheel at Knoebels in Elysburg Pennsylvania..
Some other imagery from the October night..
