Weekend Box Office: Novocaine narrowly wins the top spot in a disastrously slow weekend

It was a good news/ bad news situation at the box office this weekend for Paramount Pictures. On the one hand, their heavily hyped action comedy, Novocaine, starring The Boys’ Jack Quaid, managed to finish in the top spot (as we predicted). The bad news is that it happened to lead the slowest weekend of the year, with the $8.7 million gross certainly nothing to write home about. That said, considering that the movie sports a thrifty $18 million budget, it didn’t need to have a massive opening, and if word of mouth is good, it could become something of a sleeper. However, the B CinemaScore rating isn’t wild for an action comedy, so it’s possible it won’t be able to have as strong of a hold as the studio is no doubt hoping for.

Indeed, the race for number one didn’t end up being all that close after all. It was the race for second place that was a nail-biter, with Mickey 17 and Black Bag making around $7.5 million a piece. In the end, sources say Mickey 17 eeked out a win, but only by about $10k, with a $7.51 weekend, a 60% drop from it’s poor opening. With a $33 million total to date, this $118 million movie will hemorrhage red ink for WB, who likely have another pricey flop on the horizon next week with Alto Knights, which is barely being promoted. At least Mickey 17 is making up some of the shortfall overseas, having made about $57 million internationally to date.

Despite the star-studded cast, Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag couldn’t attract much of an adult audience. It made $7.5 million against a $50 million budget. The opening isn’t that far off from what Focus’s Conclave made, but that papal drama was playing on 1000 fewer screens and also had a ton of Oscar buzz, which propelled it into becoming a word-of-mouth hit. 

Captain America: Brave New World was in fourth place with $5.47 million, with a $185 million domestic total. It will likely gross UNDER $200 million domestically, which is disastrous for Marvel. The international cume will likely be well under $500 million, which means the studio likely lost a mint on it. Ketchup Entertainment’s The Day the Earth Blew Up made $3.17 million – not a bad opening for a tiny upstart studio. Another low-key release was the faith-based The Last Supper, which earned $2.82 million on just over 1500 screens.

Next up were two holdover family flicks, with Paddington in Peru making $2.77 million for a $41 million domestic total – the highest of the trilogy. Dog Man wasn’t far behind with $2.5 million and a $92.8 million total. Neon’s The Monkey has had more staying power than initially thought, with it in ninth place with $2.46 million for a $35.2 million total. Finally, Last Breath rounded out the top 10 with $2.3 million for an $18 million total. A24’s Opus had a disastrous opening, making only $1 million on over 1700 screens. Ouch. With a C+ CinemaScore, the A24 cult seems to have given this one a big pass.

Next weekend sees the release of Disney’s controversial Snow White. Will it be enough to reinvigorate the box office? We’ll have to wait and see!

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