Box Office Bottoms Out as Regretting You and Black Phone 2 Lead the Year’s Worst Weekend
In a Halloween box office ghost town, Regretting You and Black Phone 2 shocked the charts, leading one of the year’s slowest frames despite scant new releases and sparse crowds.
Halloween weekend at the movies was a ghost town. Still, two titles grabbed the top spots by sheer persistence: Paramount's 'Regretting You' and Universal/Blumhouse's 'Black Phone 2'. Not a victory lap so much as a limp across the finish line, but a win is a win.
The weekend, by the numbers
- Domestic weekend total: $49 million across all films (Comscore) — the slowest theatrical frame of 2025
- No. 1: 'Regretting You' — $8.1 million from 3,424 theaters (Paramount); final rankings lock on Monday
- No. 2: 'Black Phone 2' — $8.0 million from 3,305 theaters (Universal/Blumhouse)
- Also pulling weight: Netflix's 'KPop Demon Hunters' re-release and Sony's 'Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc' — about $6 million each
- Next up: Focus Features' 'Bugonia' — $4.8 million
- Nostalgia watch: Universal's 'Back to the Future' 40th-anniversary reissue — $4.7 million
'The cavalry cannot get here soon enough,' Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian said of the 'scary-slow World Series-impacted, Halloween-festivity-laden' weekend.
The bigger picture: October hit a 27-year low
October 2025 wrapped at $425 million in domestic grosses — the lowest October since the late '90s and 8 percent below 2024. Blame a quiet post-summer release slate, the World Series drawing eyeballs, and Halloween itself pulling people out of theaters. Not exactly a recipe for foot traffic.
'Regretting You' holds first, even as it slides
Josh Boone's adaptation of Colleen Hoover's novel dropped 41 percent from its opening weekend but still edged out the top spot with $8.1 million. Cume so far: $27.5 million domestic, $50 million worldwide on a $30 million budget (Box Office Mojo). Hoover adaptations are officially a thing after 'It Ends With Us' broke out in 2024, and studios are already lining up 'Verity' and 'Reminders of Him' for 2026. The audience is there; it just did not turn out in force this particular weekend.
'Black Phone 2' keeps scaring up money
The follow-up to 2022's 'The Black Phone' has reached $61 million domestic and $104 million worldwide. That makes it Blumhouse's only 2025 movie to clear $100 million, and it now sits in the same neighborhood as 'The Conjuring: Last Rites' and 'Final Destination: Bloodlines' among the year's top-grossing horror titles. On a weekend this soft, its stamina really shows.
Meanwhile, Mason Thames is quietly stacking milestones
The 18-year-old who stars in both 'Regretting You' and 'Black Phone 2' just hit three global box office milestones of his own. His 2025 films have combined for $790 million worldwide, which is 83 percent of his career total to date. If 'Regretting You' hangs on to No. 1 once the dust settles, he joins the short list of actors who have three No. 1 movies in a single year.
Bottom line: it was the year's worst weekend for ticket sales, but a couple of reliable performers kept the lights on. Now we wait for Monday's finalized rankings — and, hopefully, for that cavalry Dergarabedian is talking about.