Why should this Halloween be any different? As it has for the last several years Maple Pictures this Friday releases another installment of its lucrative and long-lived franchise, Saw VI, in lockstep with U.S. partner Lionsgate. The Toronto-shot horror, which sees Kevin Greutert take over for local David Hackl, opens on 261 screens across the country, leading into next week’s holiday. (Trapmaker-turned-director Hackl is reportedly set to the helm Saw VII, now in preproduction.) Carlo Rota of Little Mosque on the Prairie appears again, as does Greg Bryk, seen previously on ReGenesis.

Countering Saw is the animated and family-friendly Astro Boy. The computer-animated redo of the storied anime series bows on 221 screens in Canada, handled here by E1 Entertainment. Fox Searchlight, meanwhile, is rolling out its Amelia on 800 screens. Toronto’s Don Carmody had a hand in producing the biopic of the famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart, played by Hilary Swank, which shot in Ontario, Nova Scotia and South Africa.

Also in theaters on Friday:

• E1 also has the U.S. doc The September Issue, about larger-than-life Vogue editor Anna Wintour, which arrives after turns at the Vancouver, Sundance and Edinburgh film festivals. It starts on five screens, in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, before moving to Calgary and Ottawa in November.

• Lone Scherfig’s An Education — another Sundance selection, and winner of both its audience and cinematography awards — opens at Toronto’s Varsity Cinemas, the Fifth in Vancouver and Montreal’s AMC Forum via Mongrel Media.

• Angel at Sea, a French-language copro with Belgium, produced on this side by Montreal’s Palomar Films (A No-Hit No-Run Summer), bows in Quebec through Alliance Films.