Halloween weekend is doing what it usually does to the North American box office: clearing out wide releases and compressing total grosses. The exception is a three-hour documentary. You Can See Everything, the A24 release co-directed by Lance Oppenheim and Nathan Fielder, is expected to lead the frame with roughly $10 million-plus, Deadline reports.
The numbers behind the weekend
The film enters the frame from a strong second weekend. It took around $19.5 million in weekend two and has built a 14-day domestic cume of $52.7 million after a $27.1 million second week, up 6%. Its projected decline is about 40%, unusually soft for a title with this much upfront attention.
Clayface, the Warner Bros/DC Batman villain spinoff directed by James Watkins, has the bigger weekly number but not the momentum. It ended week one with $33.6 million and is looking at a drop of around 60% in its second weekend, on the high end for a genre picture.
- Clayface (Warner Bros/DC): $33.7M, week 1
- You Can See Everything (A24): $27.1M week, $52.7M cume, week 2
- Wildwood (Fathom/Laika): $18.3M, week 1
- Street Fighter (Paramount): $11.4M week, $49.8M cume, week 2
- Wicker (Black Bear): $9.2M, week 1
A landmark run for a documentary
You Can See Everything is not just leading a soft frame; it is moving up the all-time documentary chart. It has already passed the domestic totals of Bowling for Columbine ($21.5M), An Inconvenient Truth ($24.1M) and Hubble 3D ($52.5M). It remains well behind Fahrenheit 9/11 at $119.1 million, the highest-grossing non-nature, non-concert documentary in the US.
Why Halloween suppresses the box office
Halloween on a weekend pulls audiences toward parties and trick-or-treating. Last year, when Halloween fell on a Friday, all films combined to gross $57.3 million across Friday-to-Sunday, the fifth-lowest weekend of 2025. In 2015, a Saturday Halloween produced a $74.1 million overall frame with The Martian leading at $11.7 million in its fifth weekend. Some distribution sources argue matinees could still cushion the decline, but the structural effect remains.
Studios mostly stayed away
The only notable wide release is Briarcliff’s holiday slasher Christmas at the Kringles, opening at 1,825 locations with $200,000 in previews and a 0% Rotten Tomatoes score. Roadside Attractions’ Joshua Live! and Samuel Goldwyn’s The Mongoose open in limited release, while Black Bear’s Wicker expands to about 2,374 locations.
What it means
For media planners and entertainment marketers, the lesson is not that horror leads Halloween. This frame shows that social saturation and a clear cultural moment can override genre expectations. A three-hour documentary is winning because it has become the costume, the meme and the talking point.
Source: Deadline
