THB #703: Weekend Box Office

I have more interesting things to write about, but it just got super-hot in Los Angeles and I have been hiding in the cold rooms in the house. But this morning’s slew of box office reporting inspired me to repeat myself for the 1000th time about some basics of the marketplace.

Feel free to dip out now if you don’t care about box office. I would like to care less.. but every time I think I am mostly out… ya know?

Let’s start with the crap weekend we just experienced.

Wait… am I not using the right language? It was a SHITTY weekend.

Sir Patrick Stewart & others

I have to give The Hollywood Reporter’s Pam McClintock credit for at least calling it a “quiet weekend” before getting to the rationalizations.

But the media has a horrible case of box office myopia, basically selling absurd rationalizations for why anything but the most extreme failures are not really so bad.

Tnis was Weekend 19 on the box office calendar for 2025. After 6 straight weekends of achieving the most basic measure of box office health - $100 million domestic overall - for 6 straight weekends, this 2nd weekend of the summer shat the bed.

The answer is not difficult to assess. Thunderbolts* underperformed intentions (note: NOT expectations… intentions) and The Majors completely abandoned the 2nd weekend of the summer… which makes no commercial sense whatsoever.

What kind of madness is it to try to comp this not-strong Marvel title with Shang-Chi in mid-COVID 2021 or Captain America: New World Order as the only major studio release in the first 2+months of this year and a title with a strong Avengers brand or the November release of Eternals? None of those numbers mean a damned thing as regards the last 2 weekends.

Last May was a disaster for the industry… just a mess… aside from Planet of the Apes, which opened on Weekend 19. But this weekend was behind even that weekend, which followed the Weekend 18 opening of The Fall Guy to $28 million.

Aside from last May and the still stumbling-from-COVID 2022, when the only Major Studio release on Weekend 19 was Universal’s $4 million failed launch of Firestarter, it has literally been 20 years since a Weekend 19 didn’t crack $100 million… 2006… and the infamously underperforming Mission: Impossible III on Weekend 18 that knocked Tom Cruise out of Paramount for a few years. Majors actually opened 2 movies on Weekend 19 that year, with Poseidon and Just My Luck delivering $27 million, but not enough… close, with $99.3 million. M:I3 opened to $47 million and dropped 48% in its 2nd weekend.

Thunderbolts* had a bigger opening and a better hold…. but with nothing else coming into the marketplace, it was an $82 million weekend. THAT is why you program more movies with more reach. Poseidon was terrible and pretty surely lost money, even with international doing double the domestic. But Just My Luck, which was just about the end of that Lindsay Lohan era is surely, in reality if not studio books, in profit by now.

Next weekend, Final Destination returns from the dead and may do decent business. The franchise always did better overseas and none of the films ever got to $75 million domestic or did better than a $28 million opening. So we’ll see. It’s the only Major Studio release and even if this weekend’s number dipped by just 25% overall, it would take a $40 million opening from Final D to hit the overall $100 million mark for the weekend.

Last year, IF delivered $36 million opening on Weekend 20, getting the overall close to $100 million, but just short ($96.5 million)… a mark we are likely to be short of AGAIN.

And then, on Weekend 21, Mission: Impossible 8 and Lilo & Stitch “come to the rescue.” At least, that will be the media take.

It will be true that this could be the #1 Memorial Day Weekend 3-Day (and maybe 4-Day) ever. Perhaps in its way will be 2013’s $254.7 million, led by Fast & Furious 6 and The Hangover Part III and Epic (animated from Fox), delivering $172 million between them.

Next weekend’s duo is expected to overshadow that 2013 trio… but the $83 million holdover business may not be there in 2 weekends… so hard to know.

One more pull quote before I stop kicking this dead horse…

Ticket sales declined by 55% from its $74 million debut, marking a far better hold than recent Marvel adventures that slid significantly in their second weekends, such as February’s “Captain America: Brave New World” (down 68% in its sophomore outing), 2023’s “Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” (down 70%), “The Marvels” (down a whopping 78%) and 2022’s “Thor: Love and Thunder” (down 67%).

None of this matters.

There have been 35 MCU movies in the 18 years since Iron Man (2008). Only one Summer Opener opened worse than Thunderbolts*, the first standalone Thor movie (which was also the first non-Iron Man entry) in 2011.

Of the 16 MCU titles that have opened under $100 million, half were in or before 2016. And 6 of those 8 were the first offering for a new movie character (the 2 sequels were Thor: The Dark World and Captain America: The Winter Soldier)

The other 8 start in 2018 with Ant-Man & The Wasp then Spider-Man: Far From Home. The COVID era started with Black Widow. The most recent 5 titles that didn’t open to $100k is all new movie character launches, except for Captain America: Brave New World.

“When is the real script going to be ready?”

So we have a number of baselines for the MCU films. Captain America: Brave New World is the only one of the last 4 titles that got to - or is likely to get to - $200 million domestic… and just barely ($200,469,390). Thunderbolts* is not likely to get there. It’s not The Marvels, which is the only MCU movie not to get to $100 million domestic. But it’s not a hit… certainly not by Marvel standards.

So why are trade writers pushing the idea that its not a great success, but it’s not a flop? Stockholm Syndrome?

The #2 movie domestically this weekend is Sinners, which is great. The drop is getting more normal now, but a great comeback from opening weekend.

Bur what is driving me nuts on that one is the insistence that Sinners is a horror film. I get why Warners isn’t screaming to stop calling it that… because the only records it can break are horror records and the idea that it is breaking records is helpful for continuing legs and post-theatrical sales.

The first thing I wrote when I sat down to do this today was about this issue, so instead of trying to blend the pieces, I’m just going to let you jump into that piece as I wrote it…

Good ol’ Brooks Barnes - one of our very weakest industry writers, whose piece was headlined “‘Sinners’ Is a Box Office Success (With a Big Asterisk)” 21 days ago, starting an avalanche of WTF responses from a movie loving public that smelled some racism in play - was back with “‘Sinners’ Box Office Success Puts It in Elite Company,” trying to send a love letter while also continuing to mis-box-in the film by Ryan Coogler.

“The horror movie from Ryan Coogler is on a pace to collect at least $330 million in worldwide ticket sales, a level reached by few original films in the genre.”

It’s not a horror movie.

Coogler has been very clear about this. He is even quoted saying so in Brooks-ies piece, though Barnes uses the quote out of context.