May the weekend box office be ever in The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes’ favor
The Hunger Games prequel helped buoy a strong domestic box office
Aux News The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
After a couple of slow weekends at the domestic box office, things have bounced back nicely thanks to four pretty big new releases that mostly did okay (and one movie with a limited rollout that did relatively good). The biggest of those big new releases is Hunger Games prequel The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes, which opened to $44 million, and while that’s quite a lot less than every other movie in the franchise, it was enough to take the top spot on the charts. It was followed closely by second place’s Trolls Band Together, which opened to $30 million.
Third place went to The Marvels, which fell a crushing 77 percent in its second week, making only $10.2 million and tying with Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving in its debut. Five Nights At Freddy’s also fell pretty hard, making $3.5 million in its fourth week (it has $132 million total, though) and finishing up the top five.
In the second five we have The Holdovers, making $2.7 million for a total of $8.3 million after four weeks, and then Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins, with $2.5 million in its debut. Finally, the top 10 ends with The Eras Tour (which will probably end its run somewhere around $180 million total, given how it’s slowing down), Priscilla, and Killers Of The Flower Moon. Outside of the top 10 is Saltburn, which made $315,000 off of only seven screens, making for a great per-screen average (if you care, and why would you?).
Here’s the top 10 again from Box Office Mojo.
- The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes
- Trolls Band Together
- The Marvels
- Thanksgiving
- Five Nights At Freddy’s
- The Holdovers
- Next Goal Wins
- Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
- Priscilla
- Killers Of The Flower Moon
41 Comments
The Marvels only made *ten million* in its second week? It’s hard to believe this is the same MCU that once bestrode the narrow world like a colossus.
It would be hard to believe if one had just woken up from a four-year coma, sure.
You’re right, they should have put Colossus in that movie.
Even if you factor in superhero fatigue or growing doubts about the MCU’s quality, this is a shocking collapse. Quantumania — a movie that, like The Marvels, had middling reviews and starred a hero that public had not embraced — came out just this year. It was seen as a disappointment when it made only $104 million domestically its opening weekend. The Marvels will struggle to reach that number in total domestic box office.The good news, if you want to call it that, is that the upcoming MCU slate has some surer bets. Deadpool 3, Captain America: Brave New World, and Blade all involve characters audiences have some investment in. Thunderbolts is more of a gamble, but maybe can promoted as a refreshing change of pace. Guardians of the Galaxy was originally sold to us this way, with Quill flipping off the camera and the team being proclaimed “a bunch of a-holes.” And Deadpool’s certainly shown the appetite for superhero movies that aren’t so interested in imparting lessons about heroism.
I don’t find it that shocking. Franchise movies don’t exist in a vacuum. They get or lose momentum from their predecessors. The MCU hasn’t had just one disappointing movie, they’ve had several. So audiences aren’t blindly buying tickets to their next releases like they used to. They’re paying attention to reviews and deciding if something is worth seeing or not. And studios know this too – it’s why TASM franchise was stopped after two movies despite both movies doing fine financially and why Star Wars took a break from the movies after Episode IX.I don’t think anything is a sure bet with the MCU right now. They need to release a string of movies that are critically well-received and / or have a big event movie that brings the hype back. I especially don’t think Cap 4 or Thunderbolts are sure bets considering they’re follow-ups to disappointing Phase 4 projects written by the same people behind those movies / shows.
Why is it good news ? Who cares is the MCU is a success ? You work at Disney ? If the movies are good, with pleasure, if not like the last bunch, so no.
I meant the good news for Marvel/Disney, but consider your blow against our corporate overlords struck.
Deadpool 3 i’ll grant you, altho i have some doubts as to how well a 3rd movie will fare.Cap with Sam Wilson – not sure i see that as safe. the D+ series was one of the weaker entries and as much as i like Anthony Mackie i’m not sure how he’ll do as the lead. Blade seems like its a mess right now so i’m not so confident about that either, especially being made by disney i’m not sure its going to stack up well compared to the old Snipes movies.
Deadpool 3 will probably be a safer bet almost solely because of Hugh Jackman. It was probably a surer thing already but that stunt casting almost certainly sealed it. Cap- I agree. If it was a fourth Chris Evans movie it would be a no-brainer, but this is basically a solo Sam Wilson movie- I don’t know if that’s going to be enough to be a success.
I also like Mackie but he isn’t a leading man. He served well as a supporting character but Evans was beloved as Capt America and that is a tough act to follow.
The only sure fire bet is Deadpool. People don’t have a vested interest in Mackie as Capt America and Blade has ways been on the fringe of the Marvel Universe. I’d bet more on Blade than I would the new Captain America.
It’s always weird when a big franchise collapses but it happens. You can’t have Marvel levels of success indefinitely. And Disney shot itself in the foot post Endgame by absolutely flooding the market with content. If you go by runtimes there is more of Marvel phase 4 then the other three combined. And so much of it was just mediocre.
I keep saying they should’ve taken a five-year hiatus post-Endgame, which would have aligned perfectly with covid.
They’ve had some clunkers before (e.g. Thor: The Dark World, Age of Ultron), but it’s kind of been a long streak without anything particularly notable other than the Sony Spider-Man movies and GoTG 3. There’s been a few where they possibly could’ve just decided “No, it’s not working” early in production and skipped them.
In a sane world, The Marvels’ historic failure would make Disney reevaluate their decision to make identity politics the main focus of their movies. But it’s Disney. They’ll just double down on it to teach us a lesson, or something.
kill yourself
The review here for the HG movie wasn’t optimistic, but then the review, itself, was fairly awful. I’m looking foward to it. The themes are far more relevant than anything Marvel has.
Lionsgate is really smart in how they finance films. Hunger Games had a budget of $100 million, $60 million of which were pre-sold to foreign territories on top of $20 million in tax rebates from the German government (Source: Deadline’s Anthony D’Alessandro). Unlike Disney who spent $220 million on The Marvels, Hunger Games only needs to make around $220 million worldwide to be profitable. And unlike The Marvels, Hunger Games will benefit from having the closer release date to Thanksgiving and promotion as Lionsgate is not even in the AMPTP. Despite similar final grosses and critical scores, a film studio thinking within an affordable budget, staking out good release dates, and having a completed script can actually produce profitable films.
Lionsgate isn’t in the AMPTP? That’s weird, because I think this is the quietest blockbuster release I’ve been aware of for years, even accounting for the strike. I think I’ve only seen the trailer a couple of times, and I generally see trailers for big releases often enough to get sick of them even if I’m looking forward to a movie (I’m pretty sure I saw The Marvels’ trailer at least twenty times). I don’t watch the late night circuit, but usually I get an idea here or elsewhere that the stars are talking to people, and I’m not sure I’ve seen a single article about Peter Dinklage or Rachel Zegler, and those are the only two people I’m even aware are in the movie. What promotion were they even doing? I mean, there was a ton more fanfare for A Haunting in Venice, and that had a domestic gross less than this movie’s opening weekend.
“and promotion as Lionsgate is not even in the AMPTP.”
Pssst. The SAG-AFTRA strike is over. Any studio can promote their movies now, it doesn’t matter if they’re in the AMPTP.
Damn. Even Blue Beetle made $12 million on its second weekend.There was so much anger the week leading up to The Marvels’ release because of the perceived “hit job” from Variety, but it’s not like we haven’t known for years that Marvel makes all of these last-minute changes that come very late in the pipeline, forcing VFX workers to crunch to meet their deadlines. I don’t see how The Marvels’ failure, and the entire slate of movies and TV shows that have led up to it, doesn’t definitively demonstrate that the MCU “fix is in post” formula isn’t sustainable, and is no longer producing work as good as people are used to.If the story problems were fixed at the writing stage, they’d save a hell of a lot of money.
I honestly think that if they had realized as early as Black Widow that their money printing machine was broken, they still wouldn’t have been able to alter course quickly enough to correct the twenty projects they had in the pipeline without severely affecting their output, which they adamantly refused to do. And I don’t really think they actually realized anything was out of the ordinary until Eternals at the earliest. The TV side might right itself by next year, but the movies are probably stuck in this mode until Phase 6, unless the strike disrupted things enough that they have to reassess everything anyway. I mean, there’s only one movie scheduled next year anyway, and it might not make its already delayed release date. Even still, I doubt Captain America 4 comes in much under $200m, if at all. For as nimble a storytelling process as they might have had, they simply had way too many balls in the air. Sure, they could probably easily sidestep their whole Kang plan if they decided to, but they probably can’t radically alter their actual production process in time to make The Kang Dr. Doom Dynasty another Infinity War.
For me, my lack of this optimism, if that is the right word, is that I don’t the MCU storytelling was ever that nimble. Don’t get me wrong, I think there was a novelty there and there was a deeply admirable in the pure ambition of what they were attempting. However, simultaneously, you could see the building of the generic machine pretty early on, especially when looking in retrospect, and now they are kind of stuck there.That is what makes course correcting such a challenge as they can’t go back to what they were before because they still are that.
its true that there was a novelty in the early mcu movies, especially seeing all those superpowers looking reasonably good on screen for the 1st time. there’s not much novelty in seeing the latest guy who shoots beams from hands or has a suit of armor.
i’m not sure its even if they stopped the “fix it in post” philosophy it would change much at this point. People have moved on, which be OK if these movies didn’t have such huge budgets. If you need to make 500-600 million to turn a profit, then your movie either has to be 1) “must see” in order for people to feel like they’re up with pop culture or 2) something people will go see a bunch of times, espccially with their kids in tow. Most mcu movies were both for awhile. They no longer are and i’m not sure how you rev up public interest again when Endgame was such a natural ending point for things. I don’t think most people hate current marvel output but there’s a sense that its skippable or at least can wait and see it “for free” on streaming.. which again is big trouble if you need to make 500 mi in ticket sales. I’m not sure FF or X-men are necessarily the game-changers people anticipate.
Very good point, but I think if Marvel does the work and produces a string of genuinely good films back-to-back, they can lure audiences back to theaters. Based on the box office returns of previous FF movies, I agree with you that it’s not necessarily the game-changer people anticipate. But an MCU X-Men movie absolutely could be. I waited to see the last few at home, but if the trailers look exciting and the reviews are positive, I will absolutely see a new X-Men movie in theaters opening weekend, and I believe a lot of people will too.
I really love those bottom right corner videos that you can’t even x out of anymore. And it takes about 2-3 clicks to get it to pause, which seriously makes for such an enjoyable user experience.
You get starred just for using the Community GIF.
I’m embarrassed to say how excited I was to use it
Somehow I’m not seeing the words “flop”, “bomb”, “failure”, etc., being applied to the movie that made 44 million dollars in its opening weekend, i.e.: 3 million dollars less than “The Marvels”, which got called all those things and worse…
Because the movie that made 44 million dollars in its opening weekend also cost less than half as much to produce as The Marvels. I pointed it out last week too; if The Marvels had cost a fraction to make of what it ultimately did, people wouldn’t have called it a failure (although having the second lowest opening weekend for an MCU movies – that’s 2nd out of 33 – probably would have still generated headlines). It’s all relative.
Flop is relative to the costs and the expectations. A $1 million movie that makes $100 millions overall is a huge hit. A movie that cost $300 millions is a disaster if that;s what it makes.
Haven’t seen a post this annoyed with basic math in a few years.
Go take an economics class and you will understand why.
Budget and expectations were smaller for Hunger GamesI’m surprised at how badly Marvels stumbled in week 2. But the numbers don’t lie
The Marvels cratering just like I predicted. How “shocking”.
I had never seen a Hunger Games movie until last week. My daughter likes them and wanted me to see them so I watched all four in four nights with her. I thought they were OK. I took her to ‘Songbirds and Snakes’ on Saturday night and thought…it was really good? Much better than the originals? Just my opinion but I really enjoyed it. Terrific performances and a surprisingly grown-up story for a YA series. I hope it continues to do well.
Also worth pointing out about this weekend at the box office: the overall gross was $113.7 million, up from $100.7 million last year. Last year, Wakanda Forever was in its second weekend of release. So no matter how you look at it, people do want to go out to the movie theater; they just don’t want to see The Marvels (or see it again, for that matter).Source: https://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/by-year/2023/
My back-of-the-envelope math says a 78% drop is good for legs of about 1.74 times the opening weekend. That puts The Marvels at $80.4 million domestically. If that holds up, it will be between Blade 2 and Hellboy II domestically.
The MCU’s biggest problem is who they are hiring to direct these films. Stop hiring Directors of your largest films that don’t have a solid track record for making a good action movie. They keep either going with what hasn’t worked before (Peyton Reed) or getting some a director with no understanding of what they are making (I’m looking at you Chloe Zhao). Nia DaCosta is a fine Director but why trust one of your most important films of the year to a Director who’s know for making an ok horror remake and a couple of small indie films. Put someone behind the camera that knows what they are doing and understands what these movies are. Why not look at some solid action movie directors and give them a shot at making something other than what these movies have really become, which are silly comedies. The best MCU films are the ones with the best mix of action, drama, and tiny bits of comedy. The Winter Soldier is the perfect example.