Culture 3 min read By Lauren Baxter
Clayface holds No. 1 worldwide as Resident Evil passes $400 million
DC's Clayface remained the top film at the global box office over a Halloween weekend marked by a lack of major wide releases, while Resident Evil crossed $400 million worldwide.
DC's superhero horror film "Clayface" retained the top spot at the global box office over the Halloween weekend, collecting nearly $23 million worldwide. The weekend was weak overall, and industry trackers attribute much of the slump to the absence of any major wide Hollywood release, or a significant local blockbuster in China, competing with the holiday itself. Few new titles arrived with the scale needed to lift overall grosses, leaving the holdovers to carry the frame.
Sony's "Resident Evil" continued to perform strongly, surpassing $400 million in worldwide grosses. Its continued run is also expected to pressure the upcoming horror title "Backrooms," which faces a crowded field of frightening fare in theaters. The Resident Evil figure stands out in a frame where horror titles have dominated the holiday calendar, showing that the genre remains one of the few reliable draws when studios have little else on offer.
On the domestic front, the race was similarly tight. A24's Elizabeth Holmes documentary "You Can See Everything" and "Clayface" were vying for first place in North America, each on track to collect roughly $10.5 million over the weekend. "You Can See Everything" held a slight edge with an estimated $10.6 million, making it one of the closest contests of the frame. The modest totals reflect a sleepy Halloween weekend in which no single new release generated the kind of opening that typically drives holiday grosses.
The contrast between the two North American contenders underlines how divided the audience was between a prestige documentary about the rise and fall of the Theranos founder and a studio genre title built around a shape-shifting villain from the DC universe. Neither film had the cultural pull to dominate the calendar on its own, which is why the outcome was decided by fractions of a million dollars.
Beyond the numbers, the weekend also drew attention to the enduring appeal of classic horror. Online discussion among moviegoers pointed to the 1973 film "The Exorcist" as a benchmark for the genre. One fan described rewatching it each Halloween and finding that it still holds up, praising its cinematography and its exploration of evil, innocence and faith. Such audience conversation helps explain why horror continues to be a dependable draw around the holiday, even in a season otherwise short on tentpole releases.
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