Movie Spotlight - The Grudge 2

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The Grudge 2 kicks off the Halloween movie season this weekend. The sequel will be hoping to take full advantage of opening on Friday the 13th and post a strong opening weekend. Then, in an ideal world, good word of mouth will give it a shot at two more good weekends leading up to Halloween itself on October 31st. That's a pretty bold goal, but not out of the question.

We'll take a look at the history of horror movies opening in the first half of October and the Curse of the Sequel with the Female Star.

Halloween in Early October?

In the past few years, we've tracked the performance of a number of Christmas-themed family movies that have opened in early November in the hopes of establishing themselves at the top of the charts, and then holding on through both the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons. We've dubbed these Christmas in November movies, and they seem to have become an annual tradition.

Well, if there's one truism in the movie industry its that once a profitable business model is found, the studios will try every variation on the theme in the hope of replicating the success. So, if you can get moviegoers to start celebrating Christmas in November, why not try to get them to celebrate Halloween in early October?

Sure enough, most years since 2003, we've seen a new horror movie released in the first half of October. This year, we actually have two. Unfortunately, as the table below shows, the tactic has been far from successful so far. The highest-grossing horror movie to open in the first half of October is The Fog, which earned a very ordinary $29,511,112. The only other horror movie to earn over $25 million under these circumstances is Candyman, which was released way back in 1992. The Grudge 2 seems certain to do better than history would suggest, but it does have this strike against it.

Interestingly, the Halloween franchise itself tried this approach a couple of times in the late 80's, without a huge amount of success.

Performance of Horror Movies Opening in the First Half of October

Real Release	Film Name	Total Box Office Receipts
10/14/2005	Fog, The (2005)	$29,511,112
10/16/1992	Candyman	$25,554,348
10/6/2006	Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, The	$20,168,228
10/14/1994	Wes Craven's New Nightmare	$18,090,181
10/1/1988	Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers	$17,768,757
10/13/1989	Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers	$11,642,254
10/11/1985	Silver Bullet	$10,803,211
10/10/2003	House of the Dead, The	$10,199,354

- Story continues below

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The Curse of the Sequel with the Female Star

As if the omens from being a first-half-of-October release weren't bad enough, The Grudge 2 compounds its bad ju-ju by being a sequel with a female lead. For whatever reason, and honestly we have no idea why, movies starring women don't seem to evolve into successful franchises. Our second table, below, shows the best-performing sequels that have a woman lead. Whatever the genre, it seems that audiences don't show up in the numbers one would expect. Indeed some promising-looking franchises (Legally Blonde, Lara Croft, Charlie's Angels, Miss Congeniality and Speed, to take the most prominent examples) all have died after a single sequel.

We can only find two examples of sequels with female stars that have earned more than the original. Interestingly, these both involve kick-ass heroines, and follow much more along the lines of traditional male-dominated franchises such as The Terminator and Mission: Impossible movies. That's probably not a coincidence.

However, the overall prospects for The Grudge 2 might not be all bad. In particular, Sarah Michelle Gellar was the lead in the best-performing sequel below, Scream 2, although, to be fair, that was more of a ensemble piece.

Performance of Sequels with a Female Lead

Release Date	Movie	US Gross	Sequel Gross as Percentage of Original
12/12/1997	Scream 2	$101,363,301	98%
6/27/2003	Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle	$100,814,328	80%
8/11/2004	The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement	$95,149,435	88%
7/2/2003	Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde	$90,639,088	94%
2/4/2000	Scream 3	$89,138,076	87%
3/18/2005	The Ring 2	$75,941,727	59%
7/25/2003	Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life	$65,653,758	50%
1/20/2006	Underworld: Evolution	$62,318,875	120%
9/10/2004	Resident Evil: Apocalypse	$50,740,078	128%
3/24/2005	Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous	$48,478,006	45%
6/13/1997	Speed II: Cruise Control	$48,097,081	40%

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