Halloween Ends will be premiering on the NBCUniversal streaming service Peacock on the same day as its theatrical premiere. Halloween Ends is the third and final film in the Michael Myers trilogy created by director David Gordon Green and co-screenwriter Danny McBride. Although it is technically the thirteenth film in the overall franchise, it is the fourth film in its particular timeline, which takes place four decades after the events of the original 1978 Halloween, ignoring the other sequels.
Halloween Ends, which comes to theaters on October 14, will take place four years after the events of Halloween and its 2021 sequel Halloween Kills, both of which take place on Halloween night in 2018. The plot will follow Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) as she works on her memoir, and whose life is thrown back into chaos when her granddaughter Allyson's (Andi Matichak) new boyfriend Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) is accused of killing a child he was babysitting. The cast also includes Will Patton, Kyle Richards, Michael O'Leary, Omar Dorsey, and James Jude Courtney with Nick Castle as Michael Myers.
Today, the official Twitter account for the Halloween franchise shared an update from Curtis herself, presented in a two-minute video honoring the conclusion of Laurie Strode's four-decade character arc and thanking fans for their years of support. In the video, she announced that Halloween Ends will premiere on the NBCUniversal streaming platform Peacock on the same day it hits theaters. This is the same release strategy that they used for Halloween Kills last year when it came out on October 15, 2021. Check out the Twitter announcement below:
As Curtis explains in the video, this decision was made to allow as many fans as possible to see the film, even if they are still skittish about returning to theaters. However, the release model worked incredibly well for Halloween Kills, so it likely didn't seem like that much of a risk. In addition to earning the best non-live event premiere in the history of Peacock at the time, Halloween Kills made a total of $131.6 million in the box office, which - while less than Halloween 2018's $255.6 million - was a great showing for a pandemic era horror film. This is also a comparable take to Scream 2022's theatrically exclusive box office haul of $140 million, which was enough to earn another sequel, Scream 6, which just wrapped filming.
The reason they're repeating the trick again with Halloween Ends is likely to capitalize on the Halloween holiday as much as they can. Although horror films regularly do well throughout the year, an explicitly Halloween-themed film can have trouble in the box office as soon as November hits and audiences start to turn their minds toward the December holiday season. It seems like NBCUniversal also hopes this move will help drive subscribers to Peacock, making it look like they are the home of high-profile releases like this. With a simultaneous theatrical and streaming release, they can spread their net as wide as possible to nab as many viewers as they can in the two-and-a-half weeks before Halloween.
Source: Halloween
