Regretting You & Black Phone 2 Top the Year’s Worst Box Office Weekend

Regretting You and Black Phone 2 emerged as the unexpected leaders of a sluggish Halloween weekend at the box office. Despite minimal new releases and low audience turnout, both films managed to top one of the slowest theatrical frames of the year.

Regretting You and Black Phone 2 lead the Halloween weekend box office

Halloween weekend marked 2025’s lowest box office turnout, with domestic earnings at $49 million, according to Comscore. Paramount’s Regretting You took the No. 1 spot with $8.1 million from 3,424 theaters. Universal and Blumhouse’s Black Phone 2 followed closely, earning $8 million from 3,305 venues. Final rankings will be confirmed Monday.

Paul Dergarabedian, Comscore’s senior media analyst, said, “The cavalry cannot get here soon enough,” describing the weekend as “a scary-slow World Series-impacted, Halloween-festivity-laden” period (via Variety). October 2025 ended with $425 million in domestic grosses, the lowest October total in 27 years and 8 percent lower than 2024. The slump followed a quiet post-summer period and the effects of the World Series and Halloween, which pulled audiences away from theaters.

Regretting You, directed by Josh Boone and based on Colleen Hoover’s novel, fell 41 percent from its debut weekend. It has earned $27.5 million domestically and $50 million worldwide on a $30 million budget (via Box Office Mojo). Hoover’s earlier adaptation It Ends With Us achieved box-office success in 2024. Studios plan to release film versions of her other novels, Verity and Reminders of Him, in 2026.

Meanwhile, Black Phone 2, the sequel to 2022’s The Black Phone, earned $61 million domestically and $104 million worldwide. It became Blumhouse’s only 2025 title to cross the $100 million mark. The film now ranks alongside The Conjuring: Last Rites and Final Destination: Bloodlines among the year’s top-grossing horror movies.

Rounding out the top five were Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters re-release and Sony’s Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, each grossing about $6 million. Focus Features’ Bugonia followed with $4.8 million, while Universal’s Back to the Future 40th-anniversary reissue brought in $4.7 million (via Deadline).

Eighteen-year-old Regretting You and Black Phone 2 star Mason Thames also reached three global box office milestones. His 2025 films have earned a combined $790 million worldwide, making up 83 percent of his career total. If Regretting You holds its lead, Thames will join the few actors with three No. 1 movies in one year.

Source: Comingsoon.net