Tim Burton’s Gothic Fantasy Classic Officially Haunts HBO Max for Halloween

1 week ago 18

Published Oct 11, 2026, 7:30 PM EDT

Hannah covers horror, sci-fi, and games at Collider, where she writes news and features, reviews new releases, and interviews the people who make them. She’s helping build out Collider’s gaming coverage, with Pokémon as one of her specialties. If she isn’t writing about a monster, she’s probably watching one on a tape from her VHS collection.

Tim Burton has spent much of his career making the supposedly frightening characters easier to love than the "respectable" people around them. Edward Scissorhands found cruelty behind suburban smiles, while Beetlejuice made the afterlife look considerably more entertaining than dealing with the living. His movies give outsiders somewhere to belong, even when that somewhere comes with a few graves.

That makes his work particularly inviting in October, when skeletons and haunted houses become part of the decorating scheme. The attraction extends beyond how those movies look, though. Burton’s best misfits want things audiences can understand, whether that means companionship or simply being allowed to exist without someone treating them as a problem. The supernatural complications give those desires a story worth returning to.

Corpse Bride is doing exactly that on HBO Max, 21 years after its 2005 release. According FlixPatrol, the gothic animated romance sits at No. 4, directly above Coraline. The same top ten includes The Shining and A Nightmare on Elm Street, putting Burton’s movie among several obvious October viewing choices. Its position also makes it the highest-ranking animated movie on the chart at the time of writing this article, giving its unusual love story an impressive showing ahead of Halloween.

‘Corpse Bride’ Finds Its Most Appealing Characters Among the Dead

Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp starring as Emily and Victor in the classic Tim Burton movie 'The Corpse Bride.'

Directed by Burton and Mike Johnson, Corpse Bride follows Victor (Johnny Depp), who accidentally marries a dead woman while rehearsing his vows for another wedding. Helena Bonham Carter voices Emily, the bride who takes him into the land of the dead, while Emily Watson plays his living fiancée, Victoria. The predicament gives the movie its gothic romance, with Victor’s attempt to get home complicated by Emily’s hope that she has finally found someone to love.

Its No. 4 position puts it ahead of several of HBO Max’s best-known Halloween titles. On the October 5 chart, Coraline follows at No. 5, with The Shining at No. 6 and A Nightmare on Elm Street at No. 7. Friday the 13th and Scooby-Doo also make the top ten, giving Corpse Bride a strong showing in a chart crowded with seasonal favorites, even without a new sequel driving attention toward it. The ranking also offers a different angle from the success of newer releases. 21 years after arriving in theaters, Burton and Johnson’s stop-motion movie is sharing the top five with Evil Dead Burn, Backrooms, and Supergirl. Its placement shows an older animated movie holding its own alongside recent titles as Halloween approaches.