Hollywood gears up for its most important October ever

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That sums up the box office lineup in October – a vital month for the movie industry as it relighted its marquees earlier this year, after months of closures due to the pandemic.

October has never been a known month for blockbusters. It was generally a dead zone between the lucrative summer movie season and the critically acclaimed holiday award.

This year is different.

Not only is October unusually packed with major films, but this month could also say a lot about the short- and long-term future of cinema as we approach 2022 and beyond.

“There has never been a bigger October in Hollywood history,” Jeff Bock, senior analyst at entertainment research firm Exhibitor Relations, told CNN Business. “Mainly because October is traditionally filled with the chills and minor thrills of the horror variety, while this year it’s packed with big budget movie goodies.”

Bock mentioned that “In theaters it starts to look like summer again.”

“Music to the ears of every cinema owner”

“Venom: Let There Be Carnage” could be a big hit in October.

The month begins Friday with Sony’s supervillain movie, “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” a sequel to the 2018 blockbuster “Venom.”

Then, on October 8, Daniel Craig’s swan song as James Bond opens in the much anticipated and often delayed “No Time to Die” for MGM.

Then, another of cinema’s best-known brands hits theaters on October 15 with Universal’s “Halloween Kills”, the latest sequel to the Michael Myers horror franchise.

The month ends with Warner Bros. ‘ The science fiction epic “Dune” with a star cast led by Timothée Chalamet. (Warner Bros., like CNN, is owned by WarnerMedia.)

This month there are more notable films including the Sopranos prequel, “The Many Saints of Newark” and “The Last Duel,” a medieval story starring Matt Damon, Adam Driver and Ben Affleck.

The four films mentioned above will set the stage for prosperity or disaster for Hollywood.

“Barring unforeseen developments, the industry is set for a very good month,” Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at BoxOffice.com, told CNN Business. “Strong content will, in print, be released on a near-weekly basis from now on, and many of the key releases on the calendar will be exclusive to theaters.”

He added: “This is music to the ears of all movie theater owners.”

Endless summer or long winter?

Two big movies this month – “Venom” and “No Time to Die” – will be released in theaters exclusively while the other two potential blockbusters (“Halloween” and “Dune”) will hit theaters and streaming simultaneously. Audiences will see Hollywood’s new hybrid model in action and studios will see what audiences prefer.

To Paul Dergarabedian, Senior Media Analyst at Comscore (GOAL), the fact that October has two major cinema-exclusive films and two hybrids proves that “the industry has maybe 10 years of evolution in the last 18 months”.
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“Obviously, the pandemic caused the rulebook to be thrown out the window and forced studios to get creative with their exit strategies,” he told CNN Business. “And we see, in real time, the results of these different release models.”

The film industry is also well positioned as it comes out of a hot end of summer. Cinema-exclusive films like “Free Guy,” “Candyman,” and “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” all performed well at the box office. “Dear Evan Hansen,” a musical based on the Broadway show, didn’t go so well last weekend.

“The industry is in a place full of hope thanks to these exclusive films, although it did operate following a pandemic-plagued summer season that generated revenues about half that of a traditional summer, ”Dergarabedian added.

The other big factor of this October is that it can be a bridge to 2022.

If the month is reporting big or even just solid numbers, it can create momentum for the end of this year and next.

“It’s going to be a great month of filming, there’s no doubt about it. The films scheduled by the end of the year are precisely the tonic Tinseltown needs,” said Bock. “However, if the Covid variants take hold, the industry could face a long winter.”

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