The Most Successful ‘Halloween’ Movies, Ranked by Box Office Mojo
Chad Collins
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Horror is always reliable at the box office, full stop. The highest-grossing horror movies of all time prove that, both in terms of numbers and original properties. Three of the highest-grossing horror movies are original works—that is, neither remakes nor works adapted from previous literature– and across subgenres, there’s something for everyone. Killer clowns and giant sharks, demonic children or rabid zombies, you name it.
Established IPs have staying power at the box office. Love or hate any numbered slasher sequel, there’s no denying they successfully manage to rake in the cash. Here, we’ll be looking at all 12 entries in the boogeyman, Halloween canon, ranking them by worldwide box office haul.
Here are the Halloween movies ranked by Box Office Mojo:
- Halloween (2018) – $255 million
- Halloween Kills – $131 million
- Rob Zombie’s Halloween – $80 million
- Halloween H20: 20 Years Later – $55 million
- Halloween – $47 million
- Rob Zombie’s Halloween II – $39 million
- Halloween: Resurrection – $37 million
- Halloween II – $25 million
- Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers – $17 million
- Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers – $15 million
- Halloween III: Season of the Witch – $14 million
- Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers – $11 million
A Retrospective
These numbers may or may not surprise many. Depending on where you land, there’s a clear pattern to the success of Michael Myers’ perennial returns. It’s worth noting, for instance, that three of the top four are either clear or quasi-reboots of the franchise. Of course, David Gordon Green’s Halloween reboot is top dog. It easily takes the top stop at nearly twice the total haul of its closest competitor, the Green-helmed Halloween Kills.
Granted, it’s worth noting that Box Office Mojo’s metrics for adjusting for inflation are imperfect at best. A $255 million haul in 2018 is difficult to compare to $47 million in 1978. Yet, it’s clear that Michael Myers still yielded considerable resonance in 2018, 40 years after the original. Halloween represents the biggest debut ever for a movie with a female lead over 55. Additionally, despite the less-than-stellar critical reception for Halloween Kills, it still opened to an incredible $49.4 million in October 2021. Kills surprised despite contending with COVID-19, a three-year gap between entries, and a day-and-date release on Peacock.
Rob Zombie’s rebooted Halloween lands at number 3, a noteworthy feat for an entry whose critical reception was practically abysmal. Admittedly, the original and David Gordon Green’s reboot are the only two entries with objectively positive critical reception. Yet, no different than gunshots or knives to the gut, Myers is immune. Like the horror genre writ large, bank will be made and blood will be shed, critics be damned.
Back to the Original
Then, of course, Steve Miner’s Halloween H20: 20 Years Later clocks in at number 4, surprising few given the long-awaited return of Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode. Franchise fans know well enough just how beholden the 2018 reboot is to Miner’s own reboot, covering many of the same beats, hoping the audience doesn’t quite catch on. In both entries, Laurie is a loner, an alcoholic, grappling with trauma, and at risk of losing her family if she doesn’t let Michael go. David Gordon Green is tricky, but he isn’t that tricky. Retconning H20 from his new timeline doesn’t make it any less obvious that audiences have seen this movie before. They did. It was in 1996. The movie was Scream. Wait. No. 1998. Halloween H20.
Next, of course, is John Carpenter’s original, the movie that certified the slasher craze and revitalized what independent cinema could be. A box office behemoth, it has been re-released time and time again, never making anything less than Bucco bucks. There’s no topping the original. In 1978, The Shape was born, and he’s been a remunerative tentpole of cinema writ large ever since.
A Decline
From this point onward, the franchise all but nose-dives. Rob Zombie’s Halloween II and Halloween: Resurrection—celebrating its 20th birthday this week—both managed respectable showings. But, they both committed the cardinal sin of stopping their franchises short. Neither left any room for the franchise to continue, and both represent springboards for future reboots. With Laurie Strode killed and Michael reduced to webcast murderer, Halloween: Resurrection might very well have killed the bogeyman for good had it not been for Rob Zombie’s remake five years later. For Zombie’s own role, Halloween II remains an imperfect yet respectable subversion of what a Halloween movie could be, even if his kitchen-sink approach to the sequel similarly left little room for more.
The story in the remaining five entries represents little more than audience fatigue. With the release of Rick Rosenthal’s (he also helmed Resurrection) Halloween II, an inferior though still noteworthy sequel, Michael was again ostensibly killed. From there, the hands that be developed Halloween III: Season of the Witch, the first in a planned anthology release, a new Halloween movie each October telling its own campfire tale. Bye, Michael Myers. A cult classic, audiences at the time didn’t bite.
The, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers was developed to kill off Laurie Strode in the second of four distinct filmic timelines and bring the Shape back for more. Resultantly, Halloween III: Season of the Witch is the second lowest-grossing entry in the entire franchise, beating out only Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. The fifth film was probably my favorite of the original sequels, but it’s an entry audiences simply rejected wholesale.
Middle Ground
Future sequels Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers take the ninth and tenth spots respectively. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers was, well, the return of Michael Myers, a respectable showing for bringing Myers back for more Haddonfield carnage. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers looks great but is an absolute disaster of a movie narratively speaking, no matter which cut an audience sees. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the infamous Producer’s Cut is at best a marginal improvement over the original. It’s more of a curiosity than the definitive version of a movie that was never going to work anyway.
Curse likely beat out Myers’ return by dint of release. With a six-year gap between entries, some ill will dissipated, and audiences were probably curious to see what Myers might bring to the nineties. Not a whole lot, sure. But they still checked in with enough vigor to warrant another entry in the franchise, albeit a soft-reboot that retconned the previous three entries, picking up after Halloween II and ignoring the entirety of the Jamie Lloyd storyline.
The key takeaway here, however, is that the Halloween franchise is the highest-grossing slasher franchise of all time, just barely beating out Scream, both of which have sequels on the horizon. Whether Scream ultimately reigns supreme remains to be seen, though there’s no denying that, in the slasher cinematic landscape, it’s Michael’s battle to lose.
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