The excitement of Halloween was already in the air last weekend, and the North American film market also welcomed Universal Pictures' new film "Five Nights At Freddy's" to warm up this weird holiday.

"Five Nights at Freddy's" breaks Halloween opening record

As the only new film on the Halloween schedule in the United States this year, although the film received very poor media reviews, it still attracted the attention of young audiences. After being released in 3,675 theaters, it received an astonishing opening box office of 78 million U.S. dollars. Its production cost was only $20 million. Considering that the film was launched on Universal's streaming platform Peacock on the same day as its premiere, it can actually attract so many people to buy tickets, which can be said to be quite an achievement. Some analysts believe that this may be because the number of subscribers of the Peacock platform itself is only 28 million in the United States, which is far lower than that of Netflix, Max, Disney+ and other platforms. Therefore, the simultaneous online and offline release model has been chosen, which has no impact on its box office. Not big.

"Five Nights at Freddy's"

"Five Nights at Freddy's" is produced by Blumhouse Film Company, which specializes in horror films. It is adapted from the first-person video game "Five Nights at Freddy's" which was released in 2014. It tells the story of what happened in Various supernatural and terrifying incidents occurred in a pizza restaurant. The player is responsible for playing the role of a night shift employee and trying to escape the threats of various robot characters that invade the store. As of 2023, the global sales of this video game series exceed 33.5 million units, and it has a considerable mass base in the United States.

Therefore, although there are not many big names joining this movie version, it still achieved staggering box office results. As far as horror movies are concerned, such opening box office is already far better than the previously released "Scream" 6" The opening box office of "The Exorcist: The Disciple" and "Saw 10" were US$44.4 million, US$26.5 million and US$18.3 million, making them the king of horror films in 2023; at the same time, they are still second only to "Superman" The Movie had the second-highest opening ever for a video game adaptation.

In addition, this result has also become the third-highest box office opening of a horror film in history after New Line's two "Joker" series, and is also the best box office performance among horror films released on Halloween weekend. One (this record was previously set by "Saw 3" with $33 million at the box office on Halloween 2006). For the producer Bloom House, this result surpassed 2018's "Moonlight" (US$76.2 million), setting the company's best-ever North American and global opening box office results. In addition, as a PG-13 horror film, the film also surpassed "The Mummy Returns" ($68.1 million) and became the best opening box office film in this category.

Before the release of "Five Nights at Freddy's", many media outlets had predicted its extraordinary box office performance, but even the most confident box office experts predicted that its opening box office would only be $50 million. Like "Taylor Swift: The Age of Concert Tour," which ranked second over the weekend, this result fully illustrates how to create a movie-watching process into some kind of event or event if you want to achieve commercial success in the American film market today. The special experience that can only be obtained in theaters is really the top priority.

For "Five Nights at Freddy's", if the release date was not Halloween, and if it wasn't because young Americans hope to go to the theater at this moment to experience the excitement of the occasion with everyone, I'm afraid its box office performance would not be the same. amazing. Moreover, several Hollywood productions that have been particularly successful at the box office this year, from "Super Mario Bros. Movie" to "Barbie" to "Taylor Swift: Time Tour" to "Five Nights at Freddy's", have jointly The point is to successfully bring the cultural images familiar to American young people to the big screen and give them new vitality.

The second-ranked "Taylor Swift: The Age of Concert Tour" continued its box office decline last weekend, with only 14.93 million U.S. dollars. However, the total North American box office has also reached 150 million U.S. dollars, which is higher than that of "Fast and Furious 10" released this year. The total box office in North America is even higher. According to analysis by Bloomberg News, Swift's net worth has soared to US$1.1 billion just from the share of box office revenue.

The theater arranged an intermission for "Killers of the Flower Moon", causing dissatisfaction among the theaters

Ranking third at the weekend box office was Martin Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon." The film earned US$9 million at the box office during its second weekend of release, and its current North American box office total reaches US$46 million.

Considering that the running time of "Killers of the Flower Moon" is 206 minutes - half an hour longer than "Oppenheim", a very small number of European and American cinemas choose to insert a break in the middle of the film. Time is provided so that everyone can stretch their legs, buy some snacks and drinks, or go to the toilet to relieve their bladders. For some audiences, this is indeed a popular approach, but distributors Paramount and Apple have expressed opposition to the move and have contacted these theaters on the grounds of violating relevant commercial screening agreements. Ask them to cancel this wrong practice.

Thelma Schoonmaker, the film's editor and Scorsese's long-term collaborator, also said in an interview with the media that this approach of a very small number of theaters "violates relevant regulations."

"Killers of the Flower Moon" stills

It is understood that the intermission time set by these theaters varies in length, ranging from six minutes to fifteen minutes. Once upon a time, it was a common practice for Hollywood studios to set up intermissions for feature-length films. Especially during the early 3D movie craze in the 1950s, due to technical limitations, intermissions had to be used to complete film changes. Taking a break in the middle of the movie became the norm in the industry. But after the 1980s, technological progress on the one hand and the film projection industry's pursuit of maximizing profits and arranging as many screenings as possible gradually led to the intermission period gradually disappearing. However, in India and some countries in South America, the habit of showing intermissions is still maintained.

This time, even the British cinema chain Vue has restored the 15-minute intermission that was common in the UK decades ago, and is said to have received a warm welcome from the audience. In an interview with the British "Guardian", Tim Richards, CEO of the theater chain, said, "Our recent market research shows that customers are very happy to take a breather halfway through the movie. , 74% of people gave positive feedback." According to him, the practice of setting up a break in the middle of "Killers of the Flower Moon" was inspired by similar measures taken by a few theaters in the UK when "Oppenheimer" was shown. According to his idea, there is no essential difference between watching movies and watching sports games, dramas, operas, etc. They are all entertainment activities. We should not be too pretentious and burden people with double psychological and physical burdens.

Today's movies do tend to become longer and longer in length, which also scares away many viewers. Movie website What to Watch looked at the top ten movie lengths over the past fifty years and found that the average length in 2022 was 141 minutes, in 2021 it was 131 minutes, and in 1981 it was 110 minutes. However, some scholars believe through more comprehensive data research and analysis that the length of current commercial movies is not much different from the movies half a century ago in general, except that there are a few iconic movies that are particularly long in duration. It gives people the false impression that the movie is getting longer and longer.

In short, in the past year alone, there have been five blockbusters: "New Batman", "Avatar: Water Path", "Babylon", "Oppenheimer" and "Killers of the Flower Moon", with a length exceeding three hours. mark. For many European and American viewers who live in rural areas, if you add in the time of commuting from home to the theater, it means that watching a new movie may require five hours of leisure time, and it is very likely that this day will not be enough. There is no need to do anything else.

American independent director Alexander Payne also publicly criticized this phenomenon when attending the Middleburg Film Festival in the United States recently, complaining that more and more feature-length films are being made. Although he did not specifically target a particular movie, because the statement was released during the opening weekend of "Killers of the Flower Moon", it also got many people thinking. However, in Scorsese's own opinion, the length of the film is not an issue at all. "Everyone readily accepts sitting in front of the TV and watching five hours in a row. Why can't we switch to watching movies? We should give movies more respect."