It looks like Peacock needs to juice its paid subscriptions some more. Universal/Blumhouse/Miramax’s Halloween Ends, which is already set for theatrical release on Oct. 14, will also debut on Uni’s Peacock streaming service day-and-date. This is a similar practice to what they did with the previous installment of the Jamie Lee Curtis revived horror franchise, Halloween Kills, last October.

Similar to Halloween Kills, I understand that the creative partners on Halloween Ends are being made whole financially given the shift to a theatrical day-and-date distribution strategy.

Halloween Ends is one of the first tentpoles of autumn after a desert filled with adult counter-programming titles. Uni would argue that the simultaneous Peacock run for Halloween Kills last year didn’t dent the box office with a $49M opening, and a $92M domestic final. The sequel for Peacock pulled in 2.8M U.S. households according to Samba TV during a 30-day period.

The first revived Halloween from director David Gordon Green, and EP and story by guy Danny McBride, owns the fourth highest opening of October at $76.2M and turned the late October period into a box office launchpad.

Don’t blame Covid for Halloween Ends going day-and-date, it’s pure experimentation and Peacock’s need for more subs. Reported positive Covid cases continue to decline and dipped below the 100k a day mark for the first time in several weeks as of Saturday.  The CDC is reporting that the rolling 7 day average was down 9.9% to 95.65k per day.  As for hospitalizations, that number also fell 6.1% to 5.69k per day last week.  

 Curtis’ message on social today about the day-and-date strategy which she says last time was successful both in theaters and on streaming: