Clifford isn’t big or red enough to stop Eternals at the weekend box office
Even a stumbling Marvel Studios movie can outpace the rest of the competition
Aux News Eternals
Is this the end of Marvel’s stranglehold on the domestic box office? Can no one save Mickey Mouse’s once-undeniable money-printing machine? Will superhero movies soon be replaced by restrained, grown-up dramas as the most popular and profitable genre in American cinemas?
Probably no, to all of that, but Chloé Zhao’s Eternals did suffer a rather telling dip at the box office this weekend. It landed in the top spot, which was predictable (given the competition), but it fell more than 60 percent from last weekend and made only $27 million. That brings it to $118 million after two weeks, which is more than $10 million short of where Black Widow was after two weeks this summer—and Black Widow was available to rent on Disney+, while Eternals is only in theaters.
That does not bode especially well for Eternals’ future chances at the box office, given the way everything has fallen pretty hard during this pandemic era, and it means that there’s really no chance it will match the high box office bar set by Shang-Chi (now available on Disney+ and sitting at $224 million after 11 weeks).
Second place went to one of this weekend’s new movies, Clifford The Big Red Dog, which debuted at only $16 million. After that is Dune, which could crack $100 million total next weekend (not bad for a movie on HBO Max), and after that is No Time To Die ($4 million this weekend, a total of $150 million after six weeks).
Venom: Let There Be Carnage finally achieved the goal we’ve been predicting it would hit for a month, with its own $4 million take making it the second movie to cross $200 million at the U.S. box office since COVID. Pop the slimy alien champagne! After Venom is Ron’s Gone Wrong, then The French Dispatch (which is still expanding its rollout but is making less money every week anyway).
Then we have the other new movie, Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast. It made $1.8 million on a pretty limited rollout (only 580 screens, versus Eternals’ 4,090), but its per-screen average of $3,103 isn’t anything to write home to Northern Ireland about (sorry, Kenneth). Then we have Spencer, Antlers, and (somehow, two weeks into November) Halloween Kills, with Edgar Wright’s Last Night In Soho landing at the bottom of the top 10 with less than $1 million.
As usual, you can see more detailed numbers at Box Office Mojo, and you can see the top 10 in a more digestible list format below this if you didn’t read all of these paragraphs.
- Eternals
- Clifford The Big Red Dog
- Dune
- No Time To Die
- Venom: Let There Be Carnage
- Ron’s Gone Wrong
- The French Dispatch
- Belfast
- Spencer
- Antlers
- Halloween Kills
- Last Night In Soho
21 Comments
You know, I came here after watching Grace Randolphâs video about this weekâs box-office, and she took the exact opposite view that you did about the exact same thing. Weird. Sure, Eternals isnât crazy super successful, but for a movie with overwhelming âmehâ reviews (plus the fact that itâs a dour-looking intro-film for a bunch of new characters)⊠A 61% drop ainât that bad. Itâs already in the American top ten for 2021 films after only two weeks⊠Though I suppose that says more about 2021 than Eternals itself. Plus, globally-speaking, Eternals is probably suffering a bit from the âno, weâre not going to omit the gays for foreign release!â decision. Now, that was the RIGHT decision, but Iâm sure that Fiege is bemoaning the lost revenue just a LITTLE bit.
Feige? I doubt it. Disney? Oh yeah.
Is it Clifford the Big Red Celestial or Arishem the Big Red Dog?
Iâm calling him Clifford the Communist Kaiju from now on.
And here I thought that they were supposed to be bears. Woof!
My dog is like a rocket. Biggest. Reddest.
Oh, yeah? Well my hat is like a sharkâs fin.
I wonder how long it took to come up with those lyrics.
I watched Clifford and his Big Red Rocket over on the âextremeâ tab on Pornhub this weekend. Not a fan
All kaiju are communist aligned in Steve Jacksonâs Illuminati card game. Ok, maybe just the robot ones. But so is El Nino!
đ¶ Kaiju of Birdwell Island,Kaiju of every land and climeHearken to my joyful tidingsOf the Big Red future time đ¶
Saw The French Dispatch yesterday (very Wes Anderson) and seeing Last Night in Soho on the top 10, not actually seen it yet, sparked the thought that Anderson and Wright have stylistic similarities while being very distinct from each other. So now, instead of sleeping, Iâve been wondering what such a collaboration would produce for far too long.
We saw The French Dispatch last week. It has some great, laugh out loud moments, and the first of the three major segments is some of Andersonâs strongest work as a director, but it suffers from the usual problem I find in anthology films, in that the end result is very uneven. Not that the last two stories are bad, though they felt much more silly and twee, and the second one ends on a note of melancholy that it doesnât earn. But who knows, I often warm to his movies on repeat viewings, as they are always packed with so many sight gags, quips, and beguiling details that youâre bound to miss things the first time around.
Clifford is just Cats rereleased with updated CGI.
Release the butthole cut of Clifford, you cowards.
âthe bottom of the top 10″12 isnât the bottom of that, itâs below it. I saw it a little over a week ago.
This list goes to eleven, errr, to twelve.
Best I can say about Eternals is that itâs easy to rank. Out of 26 Marvel movies itâs 26. I still canât believe how bad it was. Where was that famous Kevin Feige quality control on this half-assed script?
That does not bode especially well for Eternalsâ future chances at the box office, given the way everything has fallen pretty hard during this pandemic era,
But thatâs a pretty normal drop even from before the pandemic. The ones that were âfirstsâ – Captain Marvel, Shang-Chi and of course Black Panther – have lesser drops and so do the biggest, most popular ones (Ragnarok, The Avengers etc) but drop of around 60% is pretty standard. This is pretty much what happened to everything from The First Avenger to the last two Iron Man films to Ant-Man and the Wasp. Hell, Spider-Man: Homecoming dropped 62% and itâs hardly hated. Iâm not sure this shows Marvel lost its audience.
Of course the Eternals totals are lower than that but we are in the pandemic and everything starts from a lower baseline now and itâs hard to tell how much of the Eternalsâ total is affected by that and how much was influenced by bad reviews and split audience reaction (it almost seems like people either love it or hate it).
Itâs sad realizing we will probably never again get wildly creative original films out of Hollywood. Everything needs a built-in fanbase or it doesnât get green lit. If things were like this back in the day we never wouldâve gotten classics like Beetlejuice, or Gremlins, or Ghostbusters, or Brazil, or A Nightmare on Elm Street, or any number of other original movies. I read comic books throughout my childhood into early adulthood and even I am fucking tired of comic book movies and tired cash-in sequels. At this point I want Marvel to fail.
We are in the middle of a pandemic. Box office reports are meaningless.