Box office: Bob Marley rules, Madame Web flops, The Chosen slides

Music continues to dominate at the movie theatre, while superheroes hit new lows.

Kingsley Ben-Adir as Bob Marley in Bob Marley: One Love.

Are the winter doldrums over at the box office? Maybe, maybe not.

On the plus side: After more than a month without any new major-studio hits (no, the Apple-produced Argylle doesn’t count), the reggae-star biopic Bob Marley: One Love outperformed expectations to gross an estimated $27.7 million over the weekend and $45.6 million since opening last Wednesday. That was enough to make it the 2nd-biggest film of the year already, behind the musical remake of Mean Girls.

On the not-so-plus-side: The weekend’s other two major releases both did rather poorly for their genres: Madame Web scored one of the lowest openings of any Marvel comics movie ever, making just $23.4 million since opening on Wednesday, while The Chosen Season 4: Episodes 4-6 had one of the lowest openings of any theatrical release from The Chosen, earning just $4.2 million since opening on Thursday.

While Bob Marley’s box-office performance bodes well for original films—and while it cements the popularity of films with a musical focus, from outright musicals like Wonka and Mean Girls to biopics like Elvis and concert films like Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour—the theatrical business as a whole remained in a slump, as ticket sales for the weekend landed somewhere below $80 million. That’s a major plunge from this time last year, when Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania grossed $106.1 million all by itself and helped drive the post-Valentine’s weekend up to $138.7 million.

Of course, Ant-Man ended up falling down the charts fast in the weeks that followed, to the point where it barely doubled its first-weekend take—and in hindsight, that proved to be a harbinger of the struggles that nearly all superhero movies have faced in the year since, from The Flash to The Marvels to, now, Madame Web.

As for The Chosen’s box-office slide—Episodes 4-6 made just a little more than half of what Episodes 1-3 opened to—it’s less concerning, for a couple of reasons:

• First, The Chosen Season 4 marks the first time ever that an entire season of a TV show has been released to theatres, and Episodes 4-6 marks the first time ever that The Chosen has released the middle episodes of any season to theatres—so this particular release lacked the hype of a season premiere or season finale.

• And second, these episodes were made to be streamed, and the theatrical release is basically one big marketing campaign for the streaming series, so any theatrical revenue on top of the show’s other revenues is a bonus.

I asked some fans of The Chosen why Episodes 4-6 might be doing so poorly relative to Episodes 1-3, and a few of the theories (mine and/or theirs) included:

• The time commitment: the first two installments are over three hours each, and it was already asking a lot of people to sit through one of these installments.

• The not-so-close-together theory: some people may be okay with three-hour-plus movies but couldn’t handle seeing another one so soon after the last one.

• The yes-so-close-together theory: some people may be putting this installment off until closer to the end of its theatrical run, so that they can watch the rest of the season without a big gap between Episodes 4-6 and Episodes 7-8.

• The money factor: some people can only afford to make one trip to the theatre per month.

• The story factor: Episodes 1-3 ended on a shocking, controversial plot twist—and some viewers might have been wary of similar elements in Episodes 4-6.

• The showtime factor: Anecdotally, it sounded like some theatres might have had fewer showtimes per day for Episodes 4-6 than they had for Episodes 1-3.

• The hype factor: Maybe season premieres are just bigger deals in general, and a big drop-off was always in the cards for the later episodes.

Episodes 4-6 will be in theatres for ten more days. Time will tell how it does. (One thing it will have to deal with that Episodes 1-3 didn’t: direct competition for the “faith-based” audience in the form of Ordinary Angels, which opens on Friday.)

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