Quietly, one of the biggest box-office success stories last weekend was a continuation of an almost 19-year-old, 10-film-long horror franchise.

Saw X, which sees series antagonist Jigsaw (played by Tobin Bell) travel to Mexico for a risky medical procedure, earned $18.3 million in North American ticket sales. That's not terribly impressive on paper, but coupled with its $11.3 million in international receipts, Saw X performed well enough to recoup its widely reported $13 million production budget, along with its prints and advertising cost, in its first weekend, while landing in the second-to-top spot at this weekend's domestic box office.

Revenue from subsequent TVOD, SVOD and FAST windows will further incentivize studio distributor Lionsgate to narratively ensure tormenter Jigsaw’s survival from his cancer scare, and commission Australian filmmakers Australian filmmakers James Wan and Leigh Whannell to shoot Saw XI.

Indeed, as we're shown every October in an era when the domestic box office remains in steep secular decline, the horror genre is as enduring as Jigsaw.  

The annual theatrical “screamfest” will continue this coming weekend with the premiere of Exorcist: Believer, the first Exorcist film made by Universal Pictures and prolific and acclaimed horror producer Jason Blum following a $400 million deal for rights to shoot three new series installments. 

With Blum calling it the riskiest move of his career, the buzz entering Exorcist: Believer's first weekend isn't great, with Rotten Tomatoes aggregating the film at 22%, so who knows if the risky gambit will pay off for Universal and parent company Comcast. 

But even outside the pre-Halloween release window, horror franchises have continue to deliver predictably solid performances at the domestic box office without the need of movie-critic sanctioning. 

Consider that Warner Bros.’s The Nun II just grossed $233.6 million worldwide globally in September, while leading the domestic box office for three consecutive weekends, with an aggregated reviews score of 52%.

In July, the latest installment of yet another Blumhouse horror franchise Insidious — which was also originally created by Saw impressario Whannell — also led the weekend domestic box office. Insidious: The Red Door went on to gross $188.6 million globally with critics aggregation of only 38%. 

And in March, the premiere of Paramount's Scream VI led North American theaters with $113.6 million in receipts on the way to a global haul of nearly $169 million. 

Mathias Clasen, director of the Recreational Fear Lab and associate professor at Aarhus University in Denmark, believes horror's endurance ties directly to the emotional engagement of the audience. 

“Horror appeals to us because it simulates dangers that humans have evolved to attend to,” Clasen wrote her 2017 book Why Horror Seduces. “The idea here is that evolution has wired our reward system to activate in response to experiences that allow us to learn threatening information.” 

In short, scary movies cater to our hardwired, primal fears — sharp teeth, long claws and murderous men.

According to a 2019 study published by Margie Kerr, author of Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear, our bodies release hormones when scared by things like horror films. “When you look at the brain of someone who is screaming, it looks very similar to someone who just watched somebody scream … Horror movies do allow us to connect with these different types of characters, and in doing so, think about who we are.”

And it works in favor of the traditional theatrical release window that people — particularly those age 18-34 — like to experience these films in groups rather than alone on the couch watching Netflix. 

“Where else can you be with hundreds of strangers in a room all having the same exact experience?” Marc Weinstock, Paramount’s worldwide marketing and distribution president, said in an interview with CNN last year. “You’re not distracted, you’re just sitting there and you have no idea what’s going to happen next. You can only experience in a theater.”

Horror is especially popular among young people, with a study by Movio revealing that the genre’s audience skews 11% younger than the film industry average. Considering the Global Cinema Advertising Association’s findings that more than half of movie theater visits come from the 14-to-35-year-old demographic, capturing a young audience is critical to the industry’s success.

WWE and Blumhouse Television will develop a scripted series based on WWE chairman Vince McMahon.

The limited scripted series, The United States of America Vs. Vince McMahon, will delve into the government’s 1994 indictment of McMahon for allegedly supplying anabolic steroids to WWE talent, according to the pro wrestling outfit. The series marks the first scripted series for  the WWE and the first scripted portrayal of the organization’s longtime chairman. 

Read Also: WWE to Offer New Year's Day Event 

Blumhouse Productions CEO Jason Blum along with Blumhouse TV President and former USA president Chris McCumber will develop the series. 

“We have a dramatic, riveting saga – one that’s crazier than fiction – that will appeal to the cross-section of Blumhouse and WWE fans,” said McCumber in a statement. “To say I’m thrilled about collaborating again with WWE is an understatement.”

Added WWE Executive Producer and Chief of Global Television Distribution Kevin Dunn: “Jason [Blum], Chris and their team at Blumhouse create amazing work and we look forward to delivering an inside look into one of the most pivotal moments in our company’s history.”

McMahon, Blum, McCumber, Dunn and Jeremy Gold will serve as executive producers for the series, said WWE. 

A&E and GSN have each tapped major horror film producers to scare up viewers this month within the competition/ game show arena.

Eli Roth (Hostel) will team with A&E on a special to help contestants face their fears by burying them alive on live television, while Jason Blum (Paranormal Activity) will look to thrill contestants with grizzly and gruesome tasks as part of GSN’s new game show series Hellevator.

With the two shows, A&E and GSN will join other networks celebrating Halloween with programming stunts seeking to deliver frightfully good ratings.

A&E’s Oct. 26 special Fear: Buried Alive will feature three contestants who will be placed in underground coffins as part of a psychological experiment to test the limits of their fears and their strength to conquer them. The live special, produced by Roth, will take a more psychological approach to fear rather than delivering full-fledged scares to viewers.

“We wanted to get to the psychology of what’s going on around fear,” said Elaine Frontain Bryant, executive vice president of programming for A&E. “There’s no cash prize — they’re really volunteering to see if they can push themselves in a psychological social experiment conquering fear.”

Bryant said, though, that viewers will undoubtedly tune in to see how people react under scary and stressful situations.

“Some people maybe drawn to this because it’s thrilling to watch people be scared on live TV, not knowing the nature of what might happen, while others might be drawn to the psychology of it,” she said. “Certainly the live nature of it — and being in the week of Halloween — may attract either adrenaline junkies or those viewers that like the horror genre.”

She said the network is already exploring another show within the format that tackles a different common fear. “I don’t know yet if we roll it out as a series or keep it as an event,” she said. “I certainly hope there are more.”

GSN’s Hellevator is more in line with a traditional game show/competition series. A team of friends ride a haunted elevator into various level of an abandoned slaughterhouse where they encounter frightening challenges.

The series, which debuts Oct. 21, is the brainchild of Blum, who told Multichannel News that he was looking for a vehicle beyond movies and television series to tell a horror story.

“The scary genre is not the first thing you think of when you’re thinking about competitive game shows,” said Blum, who professed to be a huge game show fan.

“We have a lot of other outlets to do horror, but doing it through the game show format, we thought, was very unique.”

The series joins GSN’s lineup of original, non-traditional game shows/competitions that include the body-painting series Skin Wars and fashion design show Steampunk’d.

Buried Alive and Hellevator also join a list of specials and stunts cable networks are developing leading into Halloween. A partial list follows.

• FX will air a special six-hour marathon of Fox’s thriller/drama series Scream Queens Oct. 31.

• Nickelodeon is running several Halloween themed original movies and premieres from such shows as Blaze and the Monster Machines, Wallykazam, Dora and Friends and Bella and the Bulldogs.

• ABC Family today (Oct. 19) will launch its “13 Nights of Halloween” stunt featuring special episodes of its procedural drama Stitchers.

• Syfy will launch a new original movie, The Hallow (Oct. 24), as well as Halloween-themed episodes of Ghost Hunters and Paranormal Witness on Oct. 28 as part of its Halloween “spook-a-thon.”

• Destination America’s Oct. 30 special Exorcism: Live will air a televised exorcism from the house that inspired the film The Exorcist.