A Friday Halloween is a godsend for anyone looking to enjoy the yearly night of frightful revelry, so long as they aren’t a studio executive. This weekend’s plethora of activities, from trick or treating to haunted houses to the intrinsic excitement of one of America’s favorite traditions, the rowdy costume party, left audiences with a number of more enticing choices than the movies for their evening entertainment. Still, theatres weren’t completely abandoned and two movies managed to have an okay time over one of the industry’s most dreaded holiday periods. Jake Gyllenhaal’s Nightcrawler braved the cursed weekend, making a $10.9 million domestic opening to finish dead even with last frame’s champ Ouija, with the two films separated by just a couple of thousand dollars. This $8.5 million picture is something of a pet project for Gyllenhaal, much like his involvement in the 2012 cop drama End of Watch. While it hasn’t rocketed to instant success, the film’s quality and growing buzz are sure to bring it well into the black within a couple of weeks.
Ouija had a good return leg. Its 43% drop to $10.9 million is very welcome for a cheap horror film with negative reviews across the board. Some credit is certainly due to the board game’s nostalgia factor and cultish status with teenage girls, but it’s still safe to say that like Nightcrawler it benefited from this weekend’s particularly uncompetitive marquee. The only other major launch in the North American market was the scarcely marketed and forgettable thriller Before I go to Sleep, starring Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth. Its stealthy entrance into theatres yielded just $2 million from 1,935 locations. Masked youths and their nighttime escapades were the bane of this weekend’s North American box office, but the story was quite different in China. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles finally announced itself in the Middle Kingdom and the Kung-Fu fighting amphibians with their beautiful companion Megan Fox earned themselves a $26.5 million debut. All in all, the picture picked up $34.7 million and finished the weekend as the world’s best selling movie. After three solid months in theaters, the film has surpassed all expectations and has earned a worldwide cumulative of $434 million. Trailing in the overseas and overall contest was The Maze Runner, which also enjoyed a successful Chinese launch. Its opening in the PRC was good for $13.7 million. Strong runs in France and Germany, where it was number one for the second time in a row, helped the picture gather $23.8 million from its 35 foreign markets. It now sits at $209.5 million in international receipts.
This, along with another good ($15.3 million) performance from Gone Girl, has Fox International execs singing as they broke Paramount’s $3.21 record for the highest overseas revenue in history for any studio. Fox’s global distribution arm has now made $3.25 billion and still has two whole months to extend their new benchmark. The studio has yet to release its Ridley Scott helmed biblical epic Exodus: Gods and Kings, starring Christian Bale, as well as Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, ensuring that its 2014 revenue will push even higher into the stratosphere of all time records.
While the most eye-catching headline was certainly Fox’s multibillion-dollar business, a handful of low budget made waves of their own. Jean Luc Godard’s inaugural 3D picture, Farewell to Language, was released in two New York theatres where it made $27,000. The existential project from one of film’s greatest living directors won the Prix du Jury at Cannes and has had an enthusiastic reception from critics worldwide, yet it is having a difficult time finding theatres willing to show it. Regardless of its quality, the picture is not a big enough draw in the U.S. to justify showings in mainstream cinemas, and the number of art-house theatres equipped for 3D projections is understandably very low, leaving fans of the French auteur with limited access to his latest production.
Birdman, after an expansion into 181 theatres earned $2.51 million for a $10,866 average and looks like it may go into wider release if it can manage another frame of this caliber.
Next week will almost certainly be a big one. Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, as well as Disney’s Big Hero 6 will make their debuts, kicking off the 2014 holiday box office season.

Lorenzo Soria