Box Office Discussion: This Is "Madness"

 Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness suffers a steep drop, while Firestarter gets burned to a crisp.

Blockbuster movies falling hard in their second weekends is not a new phenomenon.  But it has to be concerning that, of the five MCU movies released in the last 12 months, four of them suffered second weekend declines of more than 60%.  In the case of Spider-Man: No Way Home, a lot of that drop can be accounted for by its second Friday being Christmas Eve, plus it proved its bona fides in terms of legs by spending most of January at #1, and staying in the Top 10 until April.  No such excuses help explain the drops of Black Widow and Eternals, other than negative word of mouth.  And that might be what is causing Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness to come crashing down ahead of schedule.

The sci-fi superhero film took in $61.8 million, for a ten-day total of $292.6 million.  In terms of raw numbers, that's over $100 million off last week's opening.  That number also puts it below the second weekend of The Batman, a number that is even more embarrassing given that both Doctor Strange took in over $50 million more its opening weekend and, since the MCU film is nearly an hour shorter than the DC film, it undoubtedly had many more showtimes this weekend than that film had back in March.  At this point, the film will still almost certainly catch the Bat to take #1 for the year, but it seems very likely that Jurassic World and/or Thor will end up outgrossing the Doctor.

Still, with only a couple of lightly performing new movies out this weekend, Doctor Strange finished ahead of the pack by several orders of magnitude.  Coming in a distant #2 was minor animated hit The Bad Guys, which heisted another $7 million for a total of $66.4 million.  In third was Sonic the Hedgehog 2, which ran off with $4.7 million to bring its gross to $175.8 million.

Opening in fourth is Firestarter, the remake of the Stephen King-derived thriller about a girl with telekinesis and the evil government types who want her.  It could only come up with $3.8 million, which manages to be lower than the Drew Barrymore original opened to back in 1984, not adjusted for inflation.  Except the 2022 version to flame out at under $10 million.

Sci-fi hit Everything Everywhere All At Once continues to overperform, earning $3.3 million for a total of $47.1 million.  Expect it to top $50 million over the coming weekend.  Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore continues to crawl toward $100 million, conjuring up $2.6 million for a total of $90.2 million.  The Northman topped $30 million, grossing $1.8 million to bring its total to $31.2 million.  The Lost City continues to display decent legs, even though the film is now available on Paramount +.  It brought in $1.7 million for a total of $97.1 million.

Opening in ninth is Christian comedy Family Camp, starring people you've probably heard of if you are in Christian comedy circles, and people you probably haven't heard of if you aren't.  The film opened to an OK $1.4 million.  We'll see if it develops any legs.

Rounding out the Top 10 was Nicolas Cage's disappointing The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.  It brought in $1.1 million for a total of $18.2 million as it head off to get rediscovered on streaming.

In the fall of 2019, Downton Abbey, a theatrical sequel to the beloved British period soap opera, surprised observers by opening at #1 and ultimately grossing $96.9 million.  We'll see if history can repeat itself this weekend with the arrival of Downton Abbey: A New Era, which reunites most of the cast of the series for another story involving the upper-class Crawleys and their servants.  This does have an outside shot of opening on top, but will likely have to settle for a strong second.  Also heading to theaters this weekend is Men, a thriller from Ex Machina/Annihilation director Alex Garland, in which a young woman's vacation gets ruined by...well, I'm not sure, but I'm wiling to bet the title characters are responsible.  Can Downton Abbey turn things upside-down and win the weekend? Or does Doctor Strange have one more victory left in him?  We'll find out next week.