Finally, a major new wide release entered the marketplace this weekend. Unfortunately for theaters owners, it was Mickey 17, which couldn’t quite translate its oddball sci-fi premise into mainstream appeal. Mickey 17 only grossed $19.1 million over its opening weekend, not a superb debut for something that cost $118 million to make. It's always tricky to get sci-fi (unless it's Marvel, Star Wars, or Avatar) and dark comedies to major box office numbers. These two domains just seem to have an innately limited pull with the general public. To that end, Mickey 17 opened $9.7 million lower than Edge of Tomorrow, 37% ahead of The Creator's $14.07 million debut, and almost exactly on par with Ad Astra's $19 million bow.
Mickey 17 had reasonably solid trailers and posters that were distinctive enough to stand out. Beyond Warner Bros. refusing to fully commit to a final release date for this film, though, the biggest problem was simply that Mickey 17 was always going to be limited in box office potential. Robert Pattinson hasn’t had a big non-Twilight box office hit outside of The Batman. Its literary source material isn’t super famous. There were just some intrinsic box office limitations to Mickey 17, a reflection of Bong Joon-ho’s refusal to play things safe or give the marketplace what it already has.
Expect Mickey 17 to top out at around $50-55 million domestically if it doesn’t collapse next weekend. After a deeply mixed 2024, Warner Bros. Pictures really needs a box office turnaround. It doesn’t look like either Alto Knights or A Minecraft Movie have the juice to become major box office players, so everyone at the studio has to be hoping Sinners and Superman can turn things around.
Captain America: Brave New World lost all its premium format screens this weekend, yet didn't quite collapse with a 43% drop. An $8.5 million fourth weekend gross isn't exactly outstanding for a big-budget superhero movie, but it does bring the title's domestic total to $176.58 million. Can it get the extra $23.42 million necessary to crack $200 million domestically? I'd say it'll just miss it right now, but who knows.
It's a testament to how weak the marketplace is that the third-biggest movie in America this weekend grossed just $4.2 million. That "honor" belongs to Last Breath, which fell 47% this weekend to gross another $4.2 million for a $14.6 million domestic total. Just cracking $20 million domestically appears to be in the cards for this one. The Monkey held nicely with a 39% dip this weekend and another $3.9 million. It's now grossed $31 million after 17 days of release.
Rounding out the top five was Paddington in Peru, which grossed another $3.9 million (down 15% from last weekend) for a $37 million domestic total. Dog Man, meanwhile, had a fantastic 18% dip this weekend and grossed another $3.5 million for an $88.7 million domestic total.
Anora, fresh off a Best Picture win, expanded back into 1,938 locations this weekend and grossed $1.86 million for a $960 per theater average. That's its second-biggest single-weekend gross ever, only behind its $2.52 million haul from the November 8-10, 2024 weekend four months ago. It's also a staggering 595% increase over its $267,526 haul from last weekend. How does it compare to the post-Best Picture winning weekend hauls of other recent Oscar victors? It's beneath the $5.68 million weekend gross of Parasite from February 2020, Green Book’s $4.57 million gross from March 2019, and 24% beneath The Shape of Water's $2.34 million haul.
Anora did, however, come in slightly ahead of Spotlight's $1.76 million gross from March 2016, only 4% behind Birdman's $1.92 million haul from February 2015, and noticeably above Everything Everywhere All at Once's $1.29 million haul from March 2023. Anora has now grossed $18.4 million domestically after 143 days of release. This title's now poised to join We Live in Time as only the second 2024 limited release to clear $20+ million domestically and only the fifth Neon movie ever to clear $20+ million. Not too shabby for this $6 million-budgeted independent film. Mufasa: The Lion King is still in the top eight biggest movies in America after 12 weekends, with this feature grossing another $1.7 million (a 19% dip from last frame). It's now grossed $250.3 million.
Rule Breakers flopped this weekend with a $1.59 million bow, a terrible launch for a film debuting in over 2,000 theaters. This was another case of distributor Angel Studios severely miscalculating the target demo of their biggest hits. Released to capitalize on International Women’s Day on March 8 and rolling into theaters with a “girl power” marketing campaign, Rule Breakers primarily tried to win over a crowd who would see those elements (plus its emphasis on non-white characters) as “political nonsense”, “DEI”, or whatever toxic term they’re using this week. It’d be like Walt Disney Animation Studios trying to sell Sin City to families like it’s Moana 2. Angel Studios got its only real box office hits selling white savior narratives and racially questionable rhetoric. Rule Breakers didn’t necessarily offer more of that in its marketing, so of course, it flopped.
Night of the Zoopocalypse debuted to an understated $1.06 million in an estimated 1,400 theaters this weekend, narrowly eclipsing another wide release newcomer. In the Lost Lands bowed in 1,370 theaters this weekend but only opened to $1.04 million, a terrible opening way down from the openings of past Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich movies. Lost Lands distributor Vertical Entertainment, I urge you again, please improve your promotional efforts for wide releases. The lackluster debuts of this feature, Elevation, The Order, and Your Monster just from the last few months alone show your default style of releasing films in wide release needs work. We need as many movie in theaters as possible, but putting titles in 1,370 theaters is null and void if nobody is aware that something like In the Lost Lands even exists.
Queen on the Ring opened to only $380,000 from 825 theaters for a $460 per theater average while The Rule of Jenny Pen became the latest IFC Films/Shudder film to tank domestically with a $263,000 bow from 878 theaters for a $299 per theater average. More impressive at the box office was No Other Land, which expanded into 165 theaters fresh off its Best Documentary Feature Oscar win. It proceeded to gross $248,247 for a $1,504 per theater average and a $1.055 million lifetime domestic haul. Crossing $1 million for a feature with no domestic distributor is utterly astonishing. For a post-March 2020 documentary film, though, that's an extemely rare achievement. In 2023, only one non-Fathom Events documentary cracked $1+ million domestically. It'll soon surpass Fire of Love and a 2022 Leonard Cohen documentary to become the fourth-biggest non-right-wing documentary released since January 1, 2022. No Other Land's domestic box office run is nothing short of astonishing, which just makes its inability to secure domestic distribution all the more disgraceful.
Janus Films gave Flow a slight theatrical re-expansion after it won Best Animated Feature at the Oscars last weekend. The result was this little engine that could grossed another $102,100 (a 98% jump from last weekend) from 139 locations for a $735 per theater average. With $4.48 million domestically, Flow is a fantastic hit for Janus Films and by far the studio's biggest movie ever domestically.
One of Them Days returned to 1,411 theaters this weekend and grossed $725,000 for a $48.54 million domestic total as Sony/TriStar Pictures try to get this one just past $50 million domestically. Becoming Led Zeppelin finally had a hefty weekend-to-weekend drop this weekend, falling 63% for a fifth weekend haul of $305,000. However, with $9.46 million to date, it should still just inch past $10 million domestically, an astonishing feat for a documentary. Epheus opened to $21,080 from two locations for a $10,540 per theater average while the outstanding On Becoming a Guinea Fowl opened to $13,361 from four locations for a $3,340 per theater average. The Visitor debuted to $11,432 at two theaters from $5,716 per theater average.
The top ten movies this weekend grossed only $48 million, an anemic haul for the first weekend of March. Ten years ago, CHAPPiE topped the domestic box office over the first weekend of March 2015 and led the marketplace with $13.34 million while the top ten movies collected $72.25 million. That's a 50% improvement on this weekend's top ten total BEFORE taking into account a decade of ticket price inflation. Mickey 17 opening without any other major new wide releases the box office devoid of any momentum. Even CHAPPiE opened against The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a title from Fox Searchlight, a label that now no longer releases movies outside of award season (save for the occasional Kinds of Kindness).
With ten weekends so far in the 2025 domestic box office bag, it’s fair to say this year has been so far absolutely awful. There is no excuse like “the dual strikes limited our slate” like early 2024 had. A lack of new releases and an exceedingly crummy slate of titles that have cropped into theaters (remember Wolf Man and Love Hurts?) have just made the 2025 domestic box office’s first ten weekends a snooze despite 2024 ending on such a high note. How do you waste the momentum of those final six 2024 weekends buoyed by Wicked, Moana 2, Mufasa: The Lion King and Sonic the Hedgehog 3? You follow them up with the first ten dismal weekends of 2025.
Is there salvation on the horizon? Snow White and A Minecraft Movie will provide some hope in the near future simply because both should open to above $35 million each, but it’s not enough. We need a wide array of titles and, as I’ve said ad nauseum the last few months, major studios are unwilling to provide them. Imagine how much moolah theaters could’ve gotten if Amazon brought Another Simple Favor to movie theater screens this weekend. What if entities like Columbia Pictures or Paramount had acquired indie films like Eden and dropped them over the past ten weekends? There are ways to improve the lack of movies killing the marketplace and movie theaters. Studios just won’t engage in any of those tactics.