E-Edition
Get the latest news delivered daily!
Get the latest news delivered daily!
E-Edition
Trending:
Hollywood. Halloween.
They sound similar, but that’s not all they have in common. The movie and television industry’s impact on the dress-up holiday is substantial, as local costume and makeup retailers can attest.
“Hollywood, Halloween; to me, sometimes they’re one and the same,” said Phantom Halloween So Cal store chain president Ryan Goldman, who estimates 30% to 40% of his holiday sales comes from licensed character masks, costumes, animatronics and the like.
And in a city where a shop caters to industry pros throughout the year, things are getting particularly busy right now.
“It’s a big effect,” Danny Stein, CFO of Burbank’s professional makeup business Cinema Secrets, said of film and TV’s impact on his family’s nearly four decade-old store and wholesale operations. “Halloween, for retail, would be the busiest time in the store.”
As it has happened every year in recent memory, the most popular, mass-manufactured costumes for adults and children are licensed from the year’s most popular movies that lend themselves to character imitation. From the superhero genre, Captain Marvel is leading an avenger force of empowered females onto the trick-or-treat circuit.
For horror film fans, “It Chapter Two’s” Pennywise is the king of the season’s killer clowns.
For reasons Goldman isn’t quite sure of, the company with the license for DC Comics characters didn’t do a Joaquin Phoenix Joker costume this year. This happens sometimes, for such reasons as merchandising rights negotiations with the intellectual property’s owner or that copyright holder not approving something about the costume company’s designs. Goldman noted that costumes made for this season’s dark Disney princess sequel “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” were yanked before the holiday sales period got underway in September.
But not to worry. A good Halloween superstore – and Phantom has four year-round locations and two pop-ups this season, including its new, 30,000-square-foot headquarters in West Hills at the corner of Fallbrook Avenue and Victory Boulevard – can help make your look when the big costume companies drop the pumpkin.
“There are other companies that have tried to pick up the slack,” Goldman noted, pointing to a wall with a green-haired jester mask that remarkably resembles Joaquin Phoenix’s disturbed Arthur Fleck. He also noted that you can still get packaged versions of Heath Ledger’s “Dark Knight” Joker, which has been a solid seller for each of the dozen years since that movie hit. Phantom Hollywood can also combine different pieces to accentuate the new Maleficent’s look over the original, 2014 film’s or 60-year-old “Sleeping Beauty” cartoon’s.
Turning you into a zombie
You can find Jolie-like demon horns as well in a small, accessories-and-masks alcove at Cinema Secrets’ main store. An annex of more common Halloween stuff is open next door for the season, but the Riverside Drive brick-and-mortar’s main business is selling the makeup, application tools and brush cleaners it makes to the nearby studios, entertainment industry professionals and, increasingly through online retailers and chains like Sephora, the general public.
This time of year, however, more than usual of the main store’s shelf space is taken up by the company’s Woochie line of latex and foam horror appliances, which include everything from the usual scars and bullet wounds to full witch, zombie and Day of the Dead kits, with all the water-activated makeup and vintages of stage blood you could want to color your own, wearable nightmare.
Or, you can have a Cinema Secrets makeup artist apply it for you the day of your Halloween party or on All Hallows Eve.
“We’ve kind of just been making little kits – we’ve all memorized if people come in looking for, say, Joker, you give them this, this, this and this – and if you want to get it done, we can do it for you,” said Jessica Stein, the social media marketing specialist for the company started in 1985 by her makeup artist dad, grandmother and late grandfather along with her uncle Danny.
“Superheroes have been popular for years,” Danny Stein added. “But instead of you walking into the party and everyone looks the same because they’re wearing the same costume, we’ll change it with makeup. So you might go in with a group of Batmen, but we’re going to make yours look all beat up.”
The Hollywood influence on Halloween looks can go beyond characters to the actors who portray them.
“How does Hollywood influence Halloween?” Jessica Stein asked. “Everybody wants to be someone that they’re not on that one day a year, or a couple if they’ve got a lot of parties. We get people wanting to be the actual celebrities, not just the characters that they play. Obviously, Harley Quinn is huge, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone walked in and said, ‘I want to be Margot Robbie.’ She’s just blowing up now, so it’s very, very likely.”
Super females
To give some idea of the ebb-and-flow of the Hollywood-Halloween connection, Goldman noted that Robbie’s psycho sweetheart Quinn costumes aren’t selling as well this year as they did in seasons closer to the “Suicide Squad” film’s release, which introduced the character in 2016. He expects her to make a comeback in 2020, however, after Harley hits screens again in “Birds of Prey” next February.
Other super females will be introduced in that movie, and if trends hold some will surely become in-demand costumes.
“It seems like, in the last year, the empowered woman has not only come into everyday life and the movies, it’s transformed into Halloween as well,” Goldman observed. “The female characters are no longer secondary, they’re now leads: Harley Quinn, Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman. That is definitely a trend this year.”
A whole aisle of superhero stuff at Phantom Halloween reveals that the past 12 months’ different Spider-Man iterations – from the animated Miles Morales of “Into the Spider-Verse” to Peter Parker’s various “Far from Home” getups to hot videogame visions – have rejuvenated and expanded that costume line. The superhero films’ repeated re-envisioning of their characters keeps their holiday merchandising fresh (although – and we can’t imagine why – nobody thought of making a Fat Thor from “Avengers: Endgame” costume this year).
“Star Wars,” on the other hand, according to Goldman, has been noticeably shedding Halloween cosplayers over recent years, as the new characters introduced in the Disney-made films have failed to resonate like Luke, Leia and Darth did with fans. We’ll see if there’s a change in that following the opening of the climax of the latest trilogy, “The Rise of Skywalker,” at the end of this year.
Outside the big franchises, some movies capture the costuming imagination (the new, animated “Addams Family” was perfectly timed to sell more cartoony versions of Morticia, Wednesday and Lurch getups) while others don’t (the red jumpsuits the Tethered wore in Jordan Peele’s popular but perplexing “Us” aren’t flying off the racks).
Movies, with their generally bigger promotional budgets and media profiles, tend to generate more merchandise sales than TV shows. It looks like “Game of Thrones’” dress-up popularity ended with the HBO series this year, and Netflix’s megahit “Stranger Things” seems to be the only streaming show getting much Halloween traction. That’s mostly Eleven’s dresses from assorted seasons, although it is reported that the Scoops Ahoy uniforms from this summer’s Season Three have pretty much sold out.
All this keeping up with Hollywood’s latest costume trends can seem a bit exhausting, can it not? But another good thing both the holiday and the entertainment industry share is tried-and-true tradition, and that can make dressing up for Halloween less scary.
“I’ve been everything for Halloween,” Jessica, the third-generation Stein makeup maven, logically pointed out. “At this point, I just want to be comfy, so I might go for a fun Beetlejuice this year.”
Copyright © 2023 MediaNews Group