Box Office Time Machine

I've always loved going to see movies in the theater, but I don't really care about the horse race of how much they make. There are plenty of movies that I love that were total flops.

Back in 2012 I worked as a producer for an online news and discussion site called HuffPost Live, which was broadcast from AOL headquarters in Beverly Hills. I got to cosplay as a live television producer, but without the high stakes of broadcast TV. I did get to pitch and produce a lot of entertainment related segments, which I really enjoyed. I even got to bring on Richard Linklater and Julie Delpy to talk about Before Midnight, truly a dream!

Another segment I pitched was a thing I called "Box Office Time Machine" where we would compare the weekend's top earners to the top of the box office on the same weekend 20 years before. I think we even had Mr. Moviefone on to host it since he was right there in the building. I don't think viewers particularly liked it, and there's no record on the internet that it ever existed...but I'm pretty sure I was able to get it on Huffpost and didn't imagine the whole thing.

So I wanted to check and see what Halloween weekend looked like at the box office

October 24-26, 2025 via Box Office Mojo

I don't keep track of new releases the way I did when I was younger, but I've literally never heard of Chainsaw Man- The Movie: Reze Arc and it's number 1 at the box office. The only one I've seen on this list is Tron: Ares, which I enjoyed, and I think I'm probably one of a very exclusive club to have seen each Tron in the theater. My cineaste cousin Finn sent me this meme about Tron that very much spoke to me:

Now let's take a look at Halloween weekend 2005:

I think the only one on this list that I've seen is Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which was great. And now looking back, I realize that I would begin working on an Aardman animation show Creature Comforts America the following year. I loved that job. It only lasted one season on CBS, and I cried driving home in my convertible on my last day because I was so sad it was over. The most recent Wallace and Gromit was also great, and released by my current employer Netflix.

I asked a netflix animation exec if they could acquire Creature Comforts since they're in business with Aardman already, but that was about a year ago so I'm guessing there's no announcement imminent.

Happy Halloween, watch Wallace & Gromit, and I'll see YOU at the MOVIES!