“Predator: Badlands” stalks and lands franchise-best $80 million global premiere
- - “Predator: Badlands” stalks and lands franchise-best $80 million global premiere
Ryan ColemanNovember 10, 2025 at 12:20 AM
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Courtesy of 20th Century Studios
Elle Fanning in 'Predator: Badlands'
The Predator franchise has found its apex assassin.
Director Dan Trachtenberg's third entry in the sci-fi action franchise proved not only his best, but the entire series' best at the box office this weekend. Predator: Badlands hunted down a staggering $40 million domestically and $80 million abroad, narrowly edging out Alien vs. Predator's $38 million domestic haul in 2004, per Comscore; though, of course, AVP's adjusted-for-inflation $66 million domestic box office would wipe the floor with Badlands.
It's a good thing the ninth installment in the franchise — begun by director John McTiernan, writers Jim and John Thomas, and star Arnold Schwarzenegger with 1987's Predator — was so successful, because the rest of the picture of this weekend's box office was anything but.
Black Bear Pictures
Sydney Sweeney in 'Christy'
Despite a broad selection of new releases to lure audiences to the cineplex, moviegoers largely went to Predator: Badlands or just stayed home. The top 10 cumulative domestic gross of $74.9 million is a vast improvement on last weekend's $42.8 million, the worst Halloween weekend figure in over three decades. Still, little of it comes from new releases.
The next two down the chain from Badlands on the domestic charts, and four down globally, are returning titles. The Colleen Hoover-adapted romantic drama Regretting You scored the No. 2 spot on its second week of release, with a $7.1 million domestic haul and $12.8 million globally. The film has taken in $71 million so far. Supernatural serial killer sequel The Black Phone 2 keeps calling back, meanwhile, and the box office keeps answering. Director Scott Derrickson and star Ethan Hawke's second outing earned No. 3 domestically with a $5.3 million take in its fourth week, and No. 4 abroad with $9.2 million, leaving it with $120.4 million cumulatively.
Among the weekend's new releases, none did as poorly as Sydney Sweeney's boxing biopic Christy. Though the beneficiary of an all-out marketing bonanza, the harrowing true-life story of champ Christy Martin earned a shockingly low $1.3 million in its premiere, not enough to even crack the top 10. With a release on just over 2,000 screens, that's a pitiful per-theater-average of $649. Christy premiered to a good deal of acclaim at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, but now marks the star's third movie this year to premiere well under $2 million, following Ron Howard's Eden and Western Americana.
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An instructive contrast comes in the case of Die My Love, the new film from renowned Scottish auteur Lynne Ramsay. Like Christy, the film sports a starry cast in Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, premiered at a prestigious film festival (in this case Cannes), was acquired by a specialty distributor (Black Bear for Christy, MUBI for Die My Love), and was granted a generous marketing and publicity campaign. But unlike Die My Love, a polarizing and confrontational look at postpartum depression, Christy's hopeful message of finding your voice and overcoming adversity was designed to appeal to audiences, not challenge them. Yet it's Die My Love that cracked the top 10 this week, earning $2.8 million domestically to secure the No. 8 spot.
Next weekend's new release stable is packed to near overcapacity, with at least two titles possessing the horsepower to overtake Predator: Badlands.
The first is The Running Man, the latest comedic action-thriller starring millennials' answer to Tom Cruise: Glen Powell. The film is a new adaptation of the 1982 novel by Richard Bachmann (one of Stephen King's pseudonyms), the second film adaptation after the 1987 hit starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Powell's Ben Richards must evade a team of bloodthirsty hunters to win a massive cash prize in a dystopian game show.
The other contender is Now You See Me: Now You Don't, the third entry in the heist franchise begun by Boaz Yakin and Edward Ricourt. Directed this time around by Zombieland helmer Ruben Fleischer, Now You Don't pulls together a high-wattage cast of rising and veteran stars, from Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, and Isla Fisher, to Ariana Greenblatt and Dominic Sessa.
on Entertainment Weekly
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