This weekend was expected to be a new low for the 2025 box office, and it is close to that with overall grosses sinking to just $55 million while Universal/Blumhouse’s “Black Phone 2” just topped Paramount/Constantin’s “Regretting You” for the No. 1 spot with a third weekend total of $8.3 million.
This weekend is narrowly above the overall weekend low for 2025, which was the $52.2 million on the weekend of March 14, when Paramount’s “Novocaine” opened at No. 1 with just $8.8 million.
With Halloween falling on a Friday and millions of people expected to be out trick-or-treating or partying rather than going to the movies, studios stayed away from releasing any major new films this weekend. That ended up being an even smarter decision considering that the World Series went to a deciding Game 7 on Saturday, serving as even more competition for theaters.
All that said, “Black Phone 2” is still doing respectably after its $8.3 million third weekend with a running domestic total of $61.7 million, just behind its 2022 predecessor’s total of $62.4 million after three weekends.
“Regretting You” came just short of the top spot, but a strong Saturday rebound among its core female audience has still given it a nice second weekend of $7.8 million. It’s a 43% drop from the Colleen Hoover adaptation’s opening weekend, bringing the movie’s 10-day total to $27.2 million.
In third is last weekend’s No. 1 film, Sony/Crunchyroll’s “Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc” with $6 million in its second weekend. It’s a big 66% drop from the film’s $18 million debut, but that’s expected for franchise anime films that play primarily to diehards and lock out general audiences with a heavily intricate serialized storyline. With $30.1 million, it only needs $4.3 million to pass “Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero” as Crunchyroll’s second-highest-grossing film ever domestically.
Taking the No. 4 spot, though not on many industry estimates, is Netflix’s limited engagement release of Sony Pictures Animation’s “KPop Demon Hunters,” which exhibitors tell TheWrap is earning $5.5 million this weekend. Like “Regretting You,” Halloween kept Friday grosses below $1 million, but the film’s primarily female audience turned out for the sing-along version of Netflix’s most watched film ever on Saturday.
Completing the top 5 is Focus Features’ “Bugonia,” which expanded wide to 2,043 locations after a 17-screen limited release last weekend and earned $5 million.
This is the widest release ever for director Yorgos Lanthimos, though with the stacked November competition coming up, “Bugonia” is unlikely to match the $34 million domestic runs of the filmmaker’s most financially successful films, “The Favourite” and “Poor Things.”
While some audiences were put off by the film’s bleak tone, “Bugonia” is still enjoying largely positive reception with a B on CinemaScore alongside Rotten Tomatoes scores of 86% critics and 83% audience.
Finally, Universal’s 40th anniversary re-release of “Back to the Future,” sitting just behind “Bugonia” with $4.7 million. It is beating the second weekend of Disney/20th Century’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” which isn’t getting the legs it needs as it has dropped 59% from its poor $9 million opening to $3.6 million for a two-weekend total of $16 million.
