It was a scary week in the North American market – and Halloween is not even here yet. Every single movie opening domestically flopped – and flopped badly. The Last Witch Hunter, starring Vin Diesel, and Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, the latest installment in an otherwise lucrative franchise, are, respectively, Lionsgate’s and Paramount’s hooks into the always dependable pre-Halloween vibes that tend to push horror films to the top of the charts. Not this time: The Last Witch Hunter opened in fourth place in the U.S. and Canada, with a measly $10. 8 million, while Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension fared even worse, taking a spectral $8.2 million and haunting the sixth spot of the chart. Some analysts pointed to Paranormal’s simultaneous release on streaming platforms as the cause for its poor performance, while others were of a different mind: “it was just a really bad movie”, said one of the dissenting voices. Being bad, however, is no excuse for Universal’s Steve Jobs’s paltry performance this week. The biopic has an A+ plus team behind and in front of the camera: written by Aaron Sorkin, directed by Danny Boyle, starring Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet. Its initial, limited release was preceded by glowing reviews and resulted in more than healthy numbers from a roster of big North American cities – New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Washington, Miami, Toronto, Philadelphia, Seattle and Austin. The most common strategy for a movie of this caliber is to stay put in these major centers, waiting for the almost inevitable shower of nominations and assorted kudos to follow. This time, however, Universal opted for a fast expansion, opening the picture in 2,493 theaters … where it tanked faster than the real Steve Jobs’s NeXT Cube, taking in a meager $7.2 million for a cumulative total of $9.9 million. In this bloodbath – which also included major duds Jem and the Holograms ($1.3 million) and Rock the Kasbah ($1.5 million) – the holdovers triumphed. The Martian led the attack worldwide, shooting to the top of the charts in North America with a box office take of $15.9 million. Add to that an additional $30 million from 73 international markets and the Ridley Scott space adventure has just reached a worldwide cumulative total of $385.1 million, $200 million of which is in foreign-bought tickets – and that’s without the powerful Chinese and Japanese audiences, which will only see Matt Damon growing space potatoes in November and February, respectively. While stateside Goosebumps, Bridge of Spies and Hotel Transylvania 2 filled the gaps left open by the weak premieres, internationally the story belonged to the same pictures that fared so poorly in North America: The Last Witch Hunter and Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension. The latter debuted in 33 territories and raked in $18 million, in some cases – Brazil and Mexico among them – establishing new records for the franchise. After a lukewarm opening in the UK and Germany, the Vin Diesel witch-hunting vehicle caught some speed in 54 markets, bringing in $13.4 million – and it has yet to open in key markets such as Australia, France, Italy, Spain, Russia, Brazil and Mexico. Other movies leaving strong tracks overseas are Ant-Man, still number one at the Chinese box office, with a cume of $81.9 million after a mere 10 days, for a total international take of $314.8 million; Crimson Peak, which added another $26.4 million from 62 territories for a global total of $48.9 million – and has yet to open in strong markets like Mexico and Japan; and The Intern, a big hit in Korea and Japan, the two major engines pushing Nancy Meyers’s ROM-COM to a $91.1 million international cume. Next week, of course, belongs to Bond, James Bond. Will Spectre surpass Skyfall’s astonishing $88 million opening take and its even more spectacular $1.1 billion lifetime gross? That’s a challenge worth waiting for. Ana Maria Bahiana