Firestarter can’t even singe Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness at the weekend box office
Marvel Studios reigns supreme, but Everything Everywhere All At Once is still making money
Aux News Firestarter
Watch out, Wanda Maximoff. There’s a new girl with magic powers ready to burn down the world to get what she wants and… she only made a fraction of what your movie made. So maybe don’t watch out? You’re gonna be fine—or at least your movie is, since Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness came in at $61 million in its second week on the charts, and while that’s nearly a 70 percent drop from its debut (which is huge), it’s still 10 times what the number two movie made. It will easily pass $300 million by next week.
The number two movie was The Bad Guys, which made nearly $7 million and is sitting at $66 million after four weeks, followed by Sonic The Hedgehog 2 which only made $4.5 million but has $175 million banked after six weeks (one of the highest of the year, for whatever that’s worth in this weird COVID variant era we’re in). After all of those is Firestarter, the movie we were referencing up above, which came in just under $4 million in its debut. It’s also streaming on Peacock, so we’re going to blame that for its box office woes. Zac Efron, feel free to tell everyone that it would’ve hit number one or number two if not for that, we’ll back you up even if we don’t really believe it.
The only other thing worth talking about from this weekend’s box office is Everything Everywhere All At Once, which is sticking around in fifth place and made another $3.3 million this week. That’s not super impressive, but it only dipped six percent from last week and it’s still slowly rolling out to more theaters. It’s on pace to be one of A24’s biggest hits ever, and it’s clear at this point (as if it wasn’t already clear from the past eight weeks) that it’s strategy of opening small and expanding as word-of-mouth buzz became impossible to ignore has been an enormous success—you know, relatively.
It’s not Doctor Strange money, but, it’s really good for what it is, and it stands to reason that it will make a lot more money when it’s available on-demand and it no longer has to deal with Disney strong-arming its way onto every screen in America. (Which Twitter says is the only conceivable reason that a superhero movie would make money, and we’re inclined to trust everything Twitter has to say.)
After that is Fantastic Beasts, The Lost City, The Northman, a church-y camp movie about families called Family Camp, and The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent (we’ll never escape these many movies with titles that are at least five words long).
The full top 10 list is below, in a format that is good for our Google rankings. And while you’re here, maybe click on some ads and say something in the comments if you think this would’ve made for a good slideshow. Also: These numbers came from Box Office Mojo.
- Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness
- The Bad Guys
- Sonic The Hedgehog 2
- Firestarter
- Everything Everywhere All At Once
- Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets Of Dumbledore
- The Lost City
- The Northman
- Family Camp
- The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent
29 Comments
The judges would have also accepted: Firestarter Sputters Straight Out The Gate.
Firestarter Fails To Ignite Audiences
Firestarter a Nonstarter
Where There’s Smoke There’s Not Firestarter Because Smoke Would Imply Box Office Achievement Whereas Firestarter … Ehhh, You Get It.
nailed it.
The full top 10 list is below, in a format that is good for our Google rankings. And while you’re here, maybe click on some ads and say something in the comments if you think this would’ve made for a good slideshow. Also: These numbers came from Box Office Mojo. Haha, holy shit, not even pretending anymore. I admire the candor!
What heathen doesn’t use the-numbers these days???
Fascinating to find out that Sam does actually at least glance at the comments, even if he steadfastly refuses to adapt his personality or writing style in the slightest in response to a steady barrage of criticism. That’s a kind of integrity, I guess.
Sheer moxey!
Credit where credit is due. Barsanti sucks and represents a lot of what is wrong with this once-great site, and I’ve shit on him a lot, but that little paragraph made me smile.
So I make little cleaning schedules at the theatre I work at every week – basically just the order we clean movies in as they get out time wise – and I have fun with shortening long movie names down so they fit.Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent became Unbearable Talent. Still sounds like a Nic Cage appropriate movie title to me.
The ads on TV haven’t even been saying the full title, the announcer just says “Massive Talent” at the end.
What would you do Everything Everywhere All at Once?I think “Everything” covers the subsequent words, myself.
I did “Everything Everywhere”, and it just barely fit.I wanted to do something that was a mishmash of words, but then people might’ve gotten confused.“What’s ‘Every All Where At Once’?”
Month long subscription to Peacock +, $9.99.Theater tickets (for a movie I don’t feel the need to see on a bigger screen than I have at home) $15-20.Might have a bit of an impact. That said, Firestarter, Part Deux was never going to beat a Marvel movie.
Plus Peacock is one of those steaming services that lots of people get for free for having other things, like I think you get it for free if you have Comcast internet.
Yes and I rarely watch it. Only thing series I have watched on it was “Brave New World” or what ever it was. I didn’t mind it but it got canceled so…
But it’s Comcast are you really getting anything decent for free.
Very true. I should have said it’s included with you internet/cable. Nothing is ever really free
No one was going to see this movie. It’s the reason why it’s also Peacock anyway.
“say something in the comments if you think this would’ve made for a good slideshow.”But no, no it would not make a good slideshow.I read this site on a tablet, so whether tapping a “next” button, or just scrolling down a page, it’s just tapping a screen. Functionally there’s no difference. I actually find entries like “These 15 movies are released this month” or “These are the 10 best movies this year” to work better as slideshows. Each slide is a trailer and a brief synopsis, and I can watch the trailers that interest me or just go to the next slide if it doesn’t.I will simply abandon any article that is a slideshow of something along the lines of “Here’s a ranking of MCU shows” or “Here’s 50 characters from Star Wars.” I’m not going to come down to the comments to complain about it being a slideshow, I simply don’t bother with it.I think the slideshows work well when used sparingly and for the benefit the user, but I know that ain’t gonna happen here. I’m not clicking through a slideshow about “the 10 surprising ways to use Windex.”
I actually did look at that Windex article, despite me generally loathing Lifehacker. The four slides that I randomly chose all warned not to use the “blue Windex”, but instead to use the clear stuff. Windex is of course famously blue, though I’ve seen a yellow version. I’ll grant that a clear version must exist, but who buys that shit?
I do, actually. The clear one is the one with vinegar in it. It could be in my head, but I’ve found it’s easier to get off glass. The smells’s not as harsh, either.
Honestly impressive for The Bad Guys since you could stream it at home this weekend. It was a pretty fun animated movie overall.
There’s no mystery to Firestarter fizzling out, because it’s a movie based on a third-tier Stephen King property that got absolutely terrible reviews – it was something like 12% on Rotten Tomatoes when I checked. But, I suppose “Wow, that Marvel movie really crushed a film that no one liked in the first place” isn’t much of a hot take.
Firestarter should have been an X-MEN crossover.
I’m really bummed that “The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent”Hasn’t been a huge hit. The movie is SO fun and SO funny, and I really wanted this to be a big comeback moment for Nic Cage.
I’m not shocked Firestarter opened poorly. There seemed to be a bigger ad blitz to get me to watch it on Peacock than in theaters.
I wonder if Blumhouse has already made a profit on Firestarter just from preselling the distribution and streaming rights. They only spent $12 million on it (and judging by the reviews, maybe half of that was spent on the good-looking theatrical trailer).