‘Corpse Bride’ Crawls Back Onto HBO Max’s Top 10 Just In Time For Halloween
Streaming charts always start looking a little different once October rolls around, as horror catalog titles quietly push aside the usual rotation of new releases. It is less about any single marketing push and more about audiences actively seeking out something spookier to match the season.
That shift is on full display on HBO Max right now, where ghoulish staples like ‘Backrooms,’ ‘Beetlejuice,’ ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street,’ and ‘Trick ‘r Treat’ are all currently occupying spots in the top 10 movies chart. It is the kind of lineup that practically announces the time of year on its own.
Right in the middle of that pack sits ‘Corpse Bride,’ holding at number 3 and now 57 days into its run on the chart, proof that Tim Burton’s gothic romance has quietly become one of the platform’s reliable Halloween-season draws.
The 2005 stop-motion film, co-directed by Burton and Mike Johnson, follows Victor, a young groom accidentally wed to the undead Emily after slipping a ring onto what he believes is a tree branch in the woods, pulling him into a colorful underworld while his real bride waits for him above ground. The film grossed over 118 million dollars worldwide and earned largely positive reviews from critics, along with an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature. Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Emily Watson led the voice cast, continuing the dark, romantic tradition established by Burton’s earlier work on ‘Edward Scissorhands’ and ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’.
Its continued popularity lines up with a notably active stretch for Burton himself. Following the success of ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ in 2024, the director has reportedly been developing a brand-new animated project, one he has described as something that excites him a great deal, with some reports suggesting it could lean back into the hand-crafted stop-motion style that defined both ‘Corpse Bride’ and ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas.’
Burton has not stopped there either. He is reportedly attached to a sci-fi remake being written by Danya Jimenez and Hannah McMechan, and has been coy in interviews about rumors linking him to a Medusa-centered project for Sony, even while firmly shooting down any talk of a ‘Beetlejuice 3.’ For a director who once considered stepping away from filmmaking after a string of box office disappointments, it amounts to one of his busier creative stretches in years.
None of that activity explains exactly why ‘Corpse Bride’ specifically holds its ground on HBO Max’s chart this particular week, but the timing certainly helps. With a new Burton project reportedly on the way and Halloween closing in, audiences clearly still have an appetite for his particular brand of macabre whimsy, old or new.
