After a great deal of back and forth throughout the year, the United States box office has seen its best month of the year in October with $638 million. The coronavirus pandemic ensured that only a handful of 2020 movies actually achieved something close to box office success, but 2021 has been far more promising. While numbers are still much lower than they might normally be in pre-pandemic times, the performances of movies like Godzilla vs. Kong, A Quiet Place Part II, and F9 helped steer things in the right direction earlier this year.

Summertime brought some decidedly mixed results. Black Widow posted one of the best openings of the year, but dropped heavily in its second weekend. Streaming appeared to affect the performances of movies like The Suicide Squad and Space Jam: A New Legacy, while even films without dual streaming releases sometimes struggled to reach their full potential. At the same time, there were some bright spots with those like Candyman and Free Guy, and Marvel's Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings became a bona fide box office sensation as the summer turned into fall.

Now, with October coming to a close, Comscore is reporting this month has been the best one of 2021 and the entire pandemic. According to Deadline, the US box office clocked in at $638 million for October, beating out July's $583.8 million total. This month has been fueled by the successes of movies like Venom: Let There Be Carnage, No Time to Die, Halloween Kills, and, most recently, Dune. October 2021 still fell behind the same month in 2019 ($789.5 million) and 2018 ($832 million), but managed to come in 12% ahead of 2017 ($569.8 million).


October got off to an excellent start with Venom: Let There Be Carnage, which currently holds the record for the best opening weekend of the entire pandemic. That alone would've been a win for the theatrical experience, but then when Halloween Kills and Dune put in strong showings at the box office, the entire industry received another boost. Both of those films are available on streaming as well, so their strength at the box office demonstrated the rise of streaming isn't necessarily a major obstacle for theaters. Halloween weekend has seemed to be the quietest weekend of the month, with Dune staying on top for the second week, but that's to be expected with the holiday.

The rest of 2021 also has some potential blockbusters that can further bring the domestic box office back up. Next weekend heralds the arrival Marvel's Eternals, while the coming weeks will welcome releases like Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and The Matrix Resurrections. Overall, there's still a ways to go before things can be deemed completely back to normal. Nevertheless, this is a reassuring step forward for the moviegoing industry.