• An eagerly awaited new Halloween movie killed it at the box office, setting weekend records for the popular slasher genre of horror films. Reuniting Jamie Lee Curtis and the world created by horror filmmaker John Carpenter, the film collected an estimated $77.5 million in theaters in the U.S. and Canada, ComScore Inc. said in an email Sunday. That easily beat the old record for a slasher movie, set in 2009 by a reboot of the Friday the 13th series, and keeps the industry on a record path for October. Halloween was one of the most anticipated films of the year because it featured well-known figures from the 1978 original. The horror genre is one of the most enduring in Hollywood, even as the box office has become more challenging, with titles regularly breaching expectations. The film represents another win for Blumhouse Productions and its distributor, Comcast Corp.'s Universal Pictures. In Halloween, Curtis plays Laurie Strode, reprising the role that made her famous, in a final face-off with Michael Myers. The sequel picks up four decades after she narrowly escaped the masked murderer's killing rampage in the first installment. The film focuses on Strode dealing with the fallout from the trauma of those events, having become a recluse. The movie cost just $10 million to make, before marketing costs, and was projected to debut to as much as $70 million, according to Box Office Mojo. The studio had expected an opening north of $50 million. Earlier in the month, superhero movie Venom was the biggest-ever October debut, with $80.3 million. The Hate U Give, about a wrongful shooting by a police officer, was the only other new movie in wide release, expanding to more than 2,300 theaters. It placed sixth with $7.5 million after almost unanimous commendations from critics.
• Film and TV actress Selma Blair announced she has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. In a post Saturday on her Instagram account, Blair, 46, said she was diagnosed with the central nervous system disease on Aug. 16. Blair said she is struggling with the disease's effects on her: "I am disabled. I fall sometimes. I drop things. My memory is foggy. And my left side is asking for directions from a broken gps." She added, however, that thanks to the support of the cast and crew of a Netflix show she is filming, as well as her friends and family, "we are doing it. And I laugh and I don't know exactly what I will do precisely but I will do my best." Blair has co-starred in a number of films and TV shows, including the 2001 hit Legally Blonde.
A Section on 10/22/2018