Box office: A lack of new films leads to one of the worst weekends since the pandemic

Argylle has a steep drop, The Chosen has a great hold, Dune makes a comeback, and more.

The week’s top new movie, such as it is: Cole Sprouse and Kathryn Newton in Lisa Frankenstein.

Remember when Mean Girls had the lowest weekend gross of any #1 movie since 2022? That was just a couple weeks ago. Now, this week’s #1 film is even lower.

Argylle, the convoluted action comedy that already had a pretty underwhelming debut last week, held on to the top spot this week with a mere $6.5 million. That’s a steep drop of 62.8% from the film’s first weekend, and it’s just a smidge less than the $6.9 million that Mean Girls earned when it topped the list two weeks ago.

The news gets worse from there. Thanks in part to a lack of new films, this is shaping up to be one of the four worst weekends at the box office since studios and theatres tried to put the Covid pandemic behind them in the summer of 2021.

According to current estimates, all films combined earned less than $40 million this weekend. Only three other weekends have done so poorly post-Covid:

• December 9-11, 2022 — $37.7 million (top film: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever)

• January 28-30, 2022 — $35.1 million (top film: Spider-Man: No Way Home)

• September 24-26, 2021 — $38.8 million (top film: Shang-Chi and the Legend…)

On top of all that, this was apparently the worst Super Bowl weekend for theatres since the 1980s, with the exception of the Covid-affected year of 2021.¹

The only new film in wide release this week was Lisa Frankenstein, a low-budget horror comedy written by Diablo Cody (Juno, Jennifer’s Body) and directed by Zelda Williams (daughter of Robin), which opened to a mere $3.8 million.

There were also two older films that got wide releases this week, one of which was a bit more successful than the other:

• Dune, which had a simultaneous theatrical and streaming release in 2021, was sent back to IMAX screens this week to drum up interest in the sequel coming out next month. It grossed $1.7 million and landed in the week’s Top 10.

• Turning Red, the Pixar film that went straight to Disney+ in 2022, came to theatres for the first time this week, and it grossed a piddling $535,000.

Meanwhile, The Chosen Season 4: Episodes 1-3 had the best second-week hold of any theatrical release in the franchise’s history. It will finish its theatrical run on Wednesday, and then Episodes 4-6 will start its own two-week run on Thursday.

And now, a few more stats and facts re: this week’s top ten, title by title: