Battle at the Box Office 5/16/22
As expected, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness held onto the top spot at the box office for its second weekend but it had a fairly steep drop-off compared to last week’s opening.
Multiverse of Madness took in another $61 million over the weekend, dropping 67% from last weekend. Spider-Man: No Way Home also dropped 67% in December for its second weekend but it also opened higher and its second weekend was Christmas. Black Widow dropped 68% in its second weekend while Eternals dropped 62% for comparable recent MCU movies. There was lots of chatter last weekend about the movie’s Cinemascore and word of mouth. It got a B+ Cinemascore from opening night audiences, which is low for the MCU and the second lowest with Eternals getting the lowest ranking with a B. Most MCU movies get an A score or higher. If word of mouth was mixed, fewer people would probably come out in the second weekend or more might just decide to wait and stream it later this year on Disney+. The movie has made $292.6 million so far domestically and just under $689 million worldwide.
The Bad Guys stayed in second with another $7 million, bringing it to $66.4 million domestic and $165.8 million worldwide. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 stayed in third with another $4.6 million, bringing it to $175.8 million domestic and $338.4 million worldwide. Sonic is currently the third highest grossing film domestically for 2022 and the seventh highest worldwide.
Firestarter opened in fourth place with $3.8 million. There’s a good chance lots of viewers with Peacock decided it wasn’t worth going to theaters and just watched it there, as it was simultaneously available for paid Peacock subscribers. For Blumhouse, it’s one of their lowest openings sitting between The Belko Experiment and Unfriended: Dark Web. Firestarter doesn’t have a very wide international presence yet and only has an additional $2 million outside the US, giving it a worldwide gross of $5.8 million.
Everything Everywhere All at Once rounded out the top 5 with another $3.3 million, bringing it to $47.1 million domestic and $52.1 million worldwide. If it performs comparably next weekend, or even through this week, it should become the highest grossing A24 film domestically, with worldwide being a slightly harder ask as it needs around $30 million to top Hereditary’s worldwide gross of $81.2 million.
Further down the list, faith-based comedy Family Camp opened with $1.4 million, which puts it around the openings of Indivisible and Captive for faith-based movies.
Multiverse of Madness took the Per Theater average again this weekend with $13,621 in each of the 4,534 theaters it was playing in over the weekend.