the box office plunges due to the failures of Tron Ares and Dwayne Johnson

Because of the belly Tron : Ares and of Smashing Machine with Dwayne Johnson, October 2025 is one of the worst in a long time.

We know: since the Covid yearsthe challenge of the box office is to find color. However, Hollywood is no longer really trying to return to the figures of years of grace like 2019, the fault in part of the studios which favored the streaming mode of viewing. If certain records were able to give balm to the heart (summer 2023, carried by Barbie et Oppenheimeror the $1.7 billion in revenue from Vice-Versa 2 in 2024), we have especially become accustomed to depressing figures.

And that was the case during this Halloween 2025 weekend (from Friday October 31 to Sunday November 2), real nail in the coffin (no pun intended) of a dramatic month of October for American movie theaters. Between messy flops and dismal box office, we explain to you the reasons for this disaster.

On the Tron

On the one hand, this spooky Halloween weekend is simply the worst of the year regarding the North American box office. With only $49 million collected from the films in theaters, there is reason to cry. Adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s novel Regretting You (she was already the author behind Jamais plus – It Ends With us) et Black Phone 2 painfully took the lead in the ranking with 8.1 and 8 million dollars.

The US box office can (a little) count on the appeal of Japanese animation thanks to Chainsaw Man ($6 million over the weekend) and the re-release of the Netflix hit KPop Demon Hunterswhich still raised $5.3 million.

On the other hand, the entire month of North American October only raised $425 millionthe worst score since 1997 and its $385 million (not adjusted for inflation, and not counting 2020 and the closure of theaters). The main culprit is Tron : Aresthe only blockbuster of the period which is picking up badly with barely 126 million dollars collected in 4 weeks. This sequel, a priori very expensive – we are talking about a budget of 220 million dollars – will not only bury the saga for a while, but it will undermine all the competition, while we expect this type of film to generates a form of “runoff”.

A bug in the (Smashing) Machine

But he is not the only disappointment that will cause his studio to lose money. In the field of “prominent” independent cinema, there is Smashing MachineBenny Safdie’s film and the expected authorial resurrection of Dwayne Johnson. Despite the star’s supposed aura, the feature film only made $19 million worldwide (including 11 in the US), while it cost the producer and distributor A24 50 million.

Above all, we see that films struggle to find their target audience. Without necessarily speaking of a massive flop, no proposal has managed to stand out, whether we’re talking about Roofman with Channing Tatum ($28 million worldwide), Springsteen : Deliver Me From Nowhere (30 million), comedy Good Fortune with Keanu Reeves (15 million), After the Hunt by Luca Guadagnino (7.8 million), the horror film Shelby Oaks (4 million) or even the mega-gut Kiss of the Spider Woman with Jennifer Lopez (1.6 million).

The problem is that we see in these difficult months that exhibitors are often saved by special releases, events with a limited time frame, which depend a lot on the goodwill of their producers and distributors. Beyond KPop Demon HuntersOctober 2025 had a good example of this with The Official Release Party of a Showgirlthe film that accompanied the release of star Taylor Swift’s new album. Over the weekend of October 3 to 5 alone, this making-of tinged with clips collected 34 million dollars, on US soil alone.

At a time when the multiplex chain AMC has agreed to enter into new discussions with Netflix and broadcast the latest episode of Stranger Things in theaters, Are these exceptional releases, without traditional distribution, destined to become the new norm? The idea seems short-term for the financial health of cinemas, which are already burning candles for the trifecta that we hope will be a winner at the end of the year: Wicked 2, Zootopie 2 et Avatar 3.