The sleepy United States box office finally lifted its eyelids over the holiday weekend. “Bob Marley: One Love,” a feel-good musical biopic, was on track to earn $33.2 million Friday through Monday, for a strong total of about $51 million from its opening day Valentine’s Day, according to Paramount Pictures.
“Excuse me while I light my spliff,” read a celebratory post on the official X account of Marley, who died in 1981.
“One Love,” which cost about $70 million to produce, landed in what has emerged over the past year as a box office sweet spot — stories that feel both nostalgic and new — allowing it to overcome weak reviews, analysts said. of the box office. (Marley has never before been the subject of a big-screen music biography.)
But the movie business, for the most part, was anything but euphoric. The weekend’s other new blockbuster, “Madame Web,” based on a minor character from the Spider-Man comics, added to what has recently been a clear message from ticket buyers: The comic book character boom is over. “Madame Web” was on track to sell $17.6 million in tickets from Friday through Monday, for a Valentine’s Day total of $25.8 million, according to Sony Pictures.
Ticket sales for “Madame Web” were among the lowest ever for a superhero movie — a genre that, for decades, has been one of Hollywood’s most reliable moneymakers. By comparison, “Elektra,” considered a superhero flop of fame, grossed $12.8 million in its first three days in 2005, or about $21 million in today’s dollars.
It’s not like superhero movies are over. Instead, “the superhero universe is no longer expanding,” said David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box office numbers. The most popular characters will continue to draw audiences, he said, pointing to early interest in “Deadpool & Wolverine,” an upcoming superhero sequel from Marvel Studios. The first “Deadpool & Wolverine” trailer, released during the Super Bowl, garnered more than 365 million views online in its first 24 hours, setting a record.
“Madame Web” received devastating reviews. One reviewer called it the “Cats” of superhero movies. The film, directed by SJ Clarkson, whose previous experience was mostly in television, and starring an all-female ensemble led by Dakota Johnson, was also undermined by the same misogyny that hampered female-oriented films like “The Marvels.” and “Ghostbusters” (2016). Social media users and some movie sites have enjoyed dissing “Madame Web” in general and Ms. Johnson in particular.
Financially, it wasn’t a disaster for Sony — it doesn’t compare to “The Marvels,” which cost Disney about $220 million to make and only grossed $200 million worldwide last year. (Studios get about 50 percent of ticket sales, with theaters keeping the balance.) “Madame Web,” intended as a thriller for young women, cost about $80 million to make, in part because it was not based in luxurious visual effects. (Her only superpower is clairvoyance.)
“Madame Web” collected an additional $26 million in partial international release over the weekend.
“Bob Marley: One Love,” directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green (“King Richard”) and starring Kingsley Ben-Adir, sold about $29 million in tickets overseas, where it also played in partial release.
Theaters have been ghost towns on some weekends this year, the result of big-budget films like “Argyle” that failed to attract ticket buyers, Oscar-oriented art films that didn’t cross over into the mainstream and fewer wide releases. For the year so far, theaters in the United States and Canada have sold about $764 million in tickets, down 15 percent from the same period last year, according to Comscore, which compiles ticket data.
The slowdown was particularly sharp over Super Bowl weekend, when domestic theaters grossed just $38.9 million, the worst result for a Super Bowl weekend — barring the pandemic year of 2021 — since at least the mid-1980s, when complete ticket records be noted. compiled, according to Comscore.
Several big movies, including “Dune: Part Two,” will arrive in the coming weeks. But the box office is expected to continue to struggle, in part because studios pushed several films off their March release calendar as a result of union strikes that shut down production for much of last year. “Disney’s Snow White,” for example, was once slated for a March 22 release. Citing production delays, Disney pushed it to March 2025.
“This is not another existential crisis of the industry – we’ve had them and we’ve overcome them,” Mr Gross said. “Cinema has proven itself in the last two years. This is an issue with the product release schedule that will take some time to fix.”
