Super Bowl weekend doesn’t have to be this deserted. That was clear 17 years ago when Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour opened in 2008 to $31.1 million over the Big Game weekend. The next two consecutive years saw Taken and Dear John bowed to $24.7+ million debuts each in 2009 and 2010, respectively. 2012's Super Bowl weekend had Chronicle and The Woman in Black each debuted to $20+ million. The following year, Warm Bodies debuted to a robust $20.35 million and that was basically it for Hollywood exploiting Super Bowl weekend to launch big hits.
Hollywood shifting away from mid-budget movies meant that studios didn’t want to risk launching expensive tentpoles over a supposedly “cursed” weekend. Plus, the American film industries ceaseless aversion to women-skewing movies (like Dear John and Best of Both Worlds), which tend to do best over this frame, meant there were always few options for movies to launch over Super Bowl weekend. Thus, the late 2010s saw Super Bowl weekend dominated by long-forgotten movies like Miss Bala, Winchester, and Project Almanac. Of course a specific weekend won’t produce any hits if you don’t launch must-see movies over it! You can’t complain about your crops not growing if you never water them!
Rambling history lesson aside, this past 2025 frame was another instance of a sleepy Super Bowl weekend. None of the wide release newcomers even came close to hitting the highs of Taken, Chronicle, or Dear John. At least holdover Dog Man, which topped the box office once again, injected a dash of energy into the marketplace. This Peter Hasting directorial effort grossed $13.7 million, a 62% drop from its opening weekend.. Thanks to Dog Man being based on a pre-existing property, it was always going to be a tad more frontloaded than typical animated family movies. Still, this is one of the sharper drop-off’s ever for an animated family movie. However, it’s already grossed $54.1 million on a $40 million budget and has plenty of road left to travel thanks to next frame’s three-day holiday weekend and a lack of family movie competition in late February.
Newcomer Heart Eyes was the second-biggest movie in the marketplace this weekend yet it only grossed $8.5 million. Box Office Mojo's comically incomplete chart for the box office history of slasher movies (where are the two new 2020s Scream installments??) shows this was a middling debut among slasher films, coming in on par with Urban Legends: Final Cut from September 2000 and only $255,000 ahead of Friday the 13th: The New Blood from 1988. Heart Eyes will make up some ground when moviegoers inevitably check it out on Valentine's Day, but its $18 million budget (though not huge) is a bit bigger than usual for a microbudget horror movie. That means something better than an $8.5 million bow was going to be needed here, especially since audiences reacted to it with a shrug.
Heart Eyes marks the fourth consecutive new horror wide release to drop into theaters over the last four weeks. None of these titles have broken out and the likes of Wolf Man and Companion outright bombed. Pro-tip to Hollywood: it might be best to not flood the marketplace with horror features. The Monkey is tracking well two weeks out from its debut, so audiences clearly aren’t exhausted of a genre as broad and varied as horror. However, a little scheduling breathing space can give everyone some elbow room.
This weekend's other major wide release, Love Hurts, opened to a disappointing $5.9 million. That's slightly below the $5.8 million Key Huy Quan's Everything Everywhere All At Once opened to in its wide release expansion three years ago. Thanks to its Valentine's Day-themed plot and marketing, Love Hurts will undoubtedly get a boost this coming Friday. It also cost only $18 million, meaning Universal Pictures won’t lose much money on it. However, this is a drastically lower opening than similar 87North Productions releases. This figure is less than half of Violent Night's $13.5 million bow, for instance. Love Hurts also came in roughly 15% behind Nobody's $6.8 million bow from four years ago. That Bob Odenkirk title debuted not only in 600 fewer locations but also as theaters were just starting to reopen after COVID shutdowns.
Love Hurts, despite starring an extremely charismatic recent Oscar winner, just didn’t have much of a “hook” to draw in audiences. Nobody, for instance, offered the spectacle of Saul Goodman holding a gun while Violent Night promised moviegoers a classical version of Santa that also beat people to death. Love Hurts, meanwhile, looked like just an extension of Ke Huy Quan’s gifted fight choreography from Everything Everywhere All at Once. Without a distinctive villain or plot to further lure in moviegoers, Love Hurts just didn’t have a prayer. At least this one won’t lose much money, though, and it could have a solid second weekend drop next frame thanks to Valentine’s Day.
Another weekend, another solid Mufasa: The Lion King hold. This Barry Jenkins directorial effort eased another 38% this weekend to gross an additional $3.8 million. Its North American haul now stands at $235.2 million. Fun fact: sometime this week Mufasa surpassed Sonic the Hedgehog 3’s domestic total to become the champion of December 2024’s warring family movies. That’s despite Mufasa opening 42% beneath Sonic 3.
There was no second weekend salvation for Companion, which dropped a massive 68% after its underwhelming debut last weekend to gross just $3.02 million. Its 10-day haul stands at $15.4 million, not great even for a movie that cost only $10 million. That steep drop-off means Companion will also have immense difficulty holding onto screens over the three-day holiday weekend next frame. In other words, this project is cooked despite being such a fun genre feature. One of Them Days finally had a larger weekend-to-weekend drop thanks to the Super Bowl with a 49% decrease. Grossing $2.99 million, it's grossed $39.37 million domestically. A $50+ million domestic haul could still be in the cards depending entirely on how well it holds next frame.
A nice winner this weekend (and a big victory for theatrical documentaries, woo!) is Becoming Led Zeppelin, which debuted to $2.68 million at 369 IMAX locations for a $7,046 per theater average. That's more than double the $1.23 million of September 2022's Moonage Daydream, another musician documentary that initially bowed in only IMAX locales. Among biographical documentaries chronicled on The-Numbers, Becoming Led Zeppelin had the fourth-best bow ever. If it doesn't utterly collapse in its wide release expansion next weekend, it should also surpass the $4.2-$4.68 million of pre-COVID 2019 musician documentaries like Pavarotti, Amazing Grace, and Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of my Voice.
Given how often I (justifiably) complain about Sony Pictures Classics, I must be fair and give them their roses in a successful Becoming Led Zeppelin launch. Between this and I’m Still Here’s solid domestic run so far, Sony Pictures Classics is off to a strong start for 2025. If the studio can get just one more title to a $3-4+ million domestic haul this year, 2025 could be the first time since 2019 that the studios annual domestic haul exceed $20 million. Still too early to tell, but things aren't looking too shabby right now for this often beleaguered arthouse outfit.
One last note to arthouse studios like Sony Pictures Classics: please, for God’s sake, continue to put money behind documentaries and foreign films. You’ve got to corner the market on movies that bigger labels (even other arthouse labels like A24, which infamously dumps all its documentaries) aren’t making. Give audiences what they can't get elsewhere! For Sony Classics specifically, documentaries like Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song, and It Ain't Over outgrossed several narrative films the label released in way more theaters the last few years.
Flight Risk is currently just behind Led Zeppelin with a third-weekend gross of $2.6 million. Falling 52% from last frame, this Mel Gibson directorial effort has grossed only $25.19 million after 17 days of release. In its eight weekend, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 eased 46% and made an additional $1.75 million for a domestic total of $233 million. Also falling 46% this weekend was Moana 2, which rounded out the top ten another $1.54 million for a $456.1 million domestic total.
A Complete Unknown fell 46% this weekend to gross another $1.24 million for a $69 million domestic total. Next was fellow Best Picture Oscar nominee I’m Still Here. This Walter Salles directorial effort expanded into wide release and grossed $939,920 from 704 locations for a $1,335 per theater average. If it holds nicely next weekend, this one could end up clearing $4 million next weekend, which would be a solid cume. Yet another Best Picture Oscar contender is next: The Brutalist. This feature fell 50% this weekend to score its first weekend per theater average beneath $1,000. Grossing another $914,388, it's now taken in $13.72 million.
Den of Thieves 2: Pantera fell 62% this weekend and grossed $600,000 for a $35.58 million domestic toal. Wicked is winding down in its theatrical run (this is probably its last frame in wide release) and grossed another $599,800 (a 50% drop) for a $471.87 million domestic haul. Parasite returned to 193 IMAX locations this weekend and grossed $326,000 for a $1,689 per theater and a lifetime domestic haul of $53.71 million. Holdover Presence lost 1,153 theaters in its third weekend and unsurprisingly collapsed to the tune of 77%. Grossing only $305,000, its domestic total stands at $6.61 million.
IndieWire is reporting No Other Land grossed $96,150 from 22 theaters this weekend for a $4,370 per theater average and $144,613 domestic total. Despite going out into theaters with no professional distributor, it's already surpassed the $112,000 domestic total of fellow Best Documentary Feature Oscar nominee Sugarcane (released by Disney's National Geographic Documentary Films) after just ten days. Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat's $278,531 domestic total (as of Thursday February 7) makes it the biggest of this year's Oscar-nominated docs, but No Other Land may give it a run for its money despite a lack of a proper distributor. Best Animated Feature Oscar contender Flow dipped 25% this weekend and grossed $96,000 for a $4.06 million domestic total.
Anora took home the equivalent to Best Picture at the Critic's Choice, Producer's Guild of America, and Director's Guild of America Awards over just 30-ish hours from February 7 and 8, 2025. This title now looks to be a frontrunner for Best Picture, though that’s not moving the domestic box office needle so much. While other Best Picture frontrunners get a major boost just a few weekends before the Oscars, Anora dipped 24% this weekend to gross another $53,700 from 229 theaters for a $234 per theater average.
Its $15.3 million lifetime gross is terrific for a $6 million budgeted Sean Baker directorial effort, but as I said last week, it's insane Anora only had 14 days in domestic wide release back in 2024. It’s never returned to wide release in 2025, not even after it got six Oscar nominations. Bring this one back to 600+theaters! Let people see Anora on the big screen where it deserves to be seen! Then again, maybe that $234 per theater average this weekend indicates there just isn’t much current theatrical cinema hunger for Anora four months after it debuted.
Parthenope, the divisive Paolo Sorrentino that A24 acquired before it got it such outright negative marks at its Cannes 2024 premiere, debuted domestically this weekend to a middling $31,906 from four locations for a $7,977 per theater average. Armand also bowed this weekend, albeit in just two theaters, and grossed $23,000 for an $11,500 per theater average.
The top ten movies this weekend grossed only $46 million, an anemic gross that all comes down to the lack of compelling new wide releases. Super Bowl weekend in 2012 grossed $88 million thanks to two newcomers grossing $20+ million each. Meanwhile, Super Bowl 2017 (when box office dud Rings was the only wide release newcomer of note) still grossed $75.6 million thanks to holdovers like Split showing some strength.
While Super Bowl weekend 2025 left Super Bowl weekend 2024’s total of just $29.1 million in the dust, it was still behind the $72.17 million gross of Super Bowl weekend 2023 and even the $55.86 million haul of Super Bowl weekend 2022. That latter frame was plagued by a desolate marketplace and bad weather, which really speaks ill to the scheduling of major studios for this 2025 frame. How sad is it that movie theater owners and studio executives alike are once again turning to a new Marvel movie (Captain America: Brave New World) for some box office salvation? If Hollywood made more features, like women-skewing titles like Dear John and that Best of Both Worlds concert movie, maybe there would’ve been something lucrative to drop over this Super Bowl weekend. Alas, this was yet another crummy frame in 2025’s incredibly weak domestic box office performance so far.