Halloween Box Office: Every Film's Gross and the Franchise Total

The 13 Halloween films have earned about $886 million worldwide, according to the budgets and grosses published by Box Office Mojo and The Numbers. The table lists every film in release order with its budget, domestic gross, international gross and worldwide gross. Each title carries its year, because five of the films share a name with another film in the series.

One caveat on the total: Box Office Mojo lists no international gross for Halloween II (1981), Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers or Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, so their worldwide figures simply equal their domestic ones, and Halloween III: Season of the Witch shows a worldwide figure barely above its domestic one. That makes $886 million a floor rather than a ceiling. The grosses are also nominal, meaning they are not adjusted for inflation. The thirteen budgets add up to roughly $142 million, so the series has returned about six times what it cost (with the usual disagreement between sources, since The Numbers puts the Halloween Ends budget at $20 million where Box Office Mojo says $30 million).

The three films released from 2018 to 2022, Halloween (2018), Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends, supply about 56 percent of everything the series has earned. They were each released in October.

For the full list of titles and the order to see them in, see halloween movies and halloween movies in order. To find out how many halloween movies there are, the films index counts them by kind.

Halloween (2018), directed by David Gordon Green, was so successful because it cost $10 million, sold itself as a direct sequel to the 1978 film, and grossed about $260 million worldwide, the biggest gross in the series. In my opinion the reasons are fairly plain, although no studio has published a single explanation. Universal released it worldwide on October 19, 2018, and described it, in its own corporate story on the film, as a sequel to the 1978 original that departs from the other sequels. John Carpenter, who directed the 1978 film, came back as executive producer and creative consultant, and Laurie Strode was again played by Jamie Lee Curtis. The film also had its world premiere on September 8, 2018 at the Toronto International Film Festival's Midnight Madness program, about six weeks before it opened.

That is a clean pitch, and perhaps the cleanest the series has had since 1978. Viewers did not need to know about the cult in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers or the internet show in Halloween: Resurrection. They needed only the first film, which is why halloween 2018 works as an entry point and why the michael myers character page treats it as a fresh start.

How good was the return? Measured against budget, Halloween (2018) took in about 26 times what it cost. Halloween Kills returned about 6.7 times its $20 million and Halloween Ends about 3.5 times its $30 million at Box Office Mojo's budget figure (about 5.2 times at The Numbers' $20 million). Both sequels opened on Peacock the same day as theaters, on October 15, 2021 and October 14, 2022. It could be argued that streaming cost them some ticket sales, but that is speculation rather than a finding.

The best return on budget belongs to the oldest film. Halloween 1978 made $70.3 million on $325,000, more than 200 times its cost, and it did so at 1978 ticket prices. Adjusting for inflation would lift that figure further, though neither Box Office Mojo nor The Numbers publishes an adjusted series for the franchise, so I will not invent one. Halloween II 1981 returned about ten times its $2.5 million, and then the money flattened out. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers sits last at $11.6 million, still about 2.3 times its $5 million budget, so every one of the thirteen films grossed more than its reported budget.

The middle of the table tells its own story. Rob Zombie's halloween 2007 rob zombie took $80.5 million on $15 million, which put it ahead of both halloween h20 at $75.0 million and the 1978 original in raw dollars. Its follow up, halloween 2 2009, halved that to $39.4 million. Halloween resurrection fell the same way after H20, from $75.0 million to $37.7 million. As such, the pattern across timelines is consistent: the first film after a reset earns well, and the next one drops sharply. The 2018 trilogy repeated it, with Halloween Kills at $133.4 million and Halloween Ends at $104.4 million.

No new film has a date. TheWrap reported that Miramax won the franchise television rights and plans a series with Trancas, with no film title or release date attached, so the totals above will hold until something is announced. For the latest, see new halloween movie; to see which films earned their money, compare these numbers with halloween movies ranked.