Box Office: Fassbender’s Spy Thriller, Pattinson’s Sci-Fi Flick & Quaid’s Action Movie Are In A Three-way Battle For One Of The Worst 2025 Weekends – Screen Rant

Novocaine Takes The Lead With A Dismal No. 1 GrossThis article was originally written Saturday AM and has been updated Sunday AM with up-to-date box office projections (in bold), a full chart, and further analysis.Novocaine has pulled ahead of Black Bag, and Mickey 17 after going head to head in a dismal weekend for the 2025 box office. Novocaine, which is an action comedy starring Jack Quaid, and Black Bag, which is a Steven Soderberg-directed spy thriller starring Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett, are both new wide releases. The Mickey 17 release kicked off the week before. The Bong Joon Ho-directed Robert Pattinson sci-fi movie debuted at No. 1 with a record-breaking $19 million haul that was the Parasite director’s best in domestic history but still came nowhere close to its $118 million budget.Per Variety, as of Sunday morning, Novocaine is set to take No. 1 at the domestic box office with a projected 3-day total of $8.7 million. Black Bag and Mickey 17, which were both neck and neck as of Saturday, are trailing slightly behind with $7 million and $7.6 million respectively. Although the new action-comedy has become the victor among the three titles, it has become one of the lowest-grossing No. 1 debuts since theaters were reopened following global shutdowns amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.Meanwhile, the overall weekend is set to be the worst of 2025, with the entire slate of titles (which also includes Captain America: Brave New World, Opus, Paddington in Peru, and The Monkey) projected to earn just $54 million in domestic theaters, which would sink the weekend beneath the previous lows of Super Bowl weekend ($54.3 million) and Oscar weekend ($54.5 million). See the full domestic Top 5 below:#Title3-Day TotalCumulative (Domestic)1Novocaine$8.7 million$8.7 million (weekend 1)2Mickey 17$7.6 million$33.3 million (weekend 2)3Black Bag$7 million$7 million (weekend 1)4Captain America: Brave New World$5.2 million$185 million (weekend 5)5The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie$3 million$3 million (weekend 1)Outside of Mickey 17, the only other holdover title to still have a place in the Top 5 is Captain America: Brave New World, which has fallen from No. 2 to No. 4 with a drop of 38% in its fifth weekend. This isn’t bad in terms of chart position, as the first Captain America movie hit No. 13 during its fifth weekend, while Civil War had fallen to No. 6 and The Winter Soldier had matched it at No. 4. However, Brave New World is still nowhere close to making enough money to offset its $180 million production budget.Brave New World’s budget likely means that it needs to earn $450 million worldwide in order to break even.Meanwhile, with the new Looney Tunes movie The Day the Earth Blew Up scraping together a No. 5 debut with $3 million, this means that three holdover titles have exited the chart. The family movie sequel Paddington in Peru has fallen roughly 26% from No. 5 to No. 7, the Osgood Perkins horror movie The Monkey has dropped about 36% from No. 4 to No. 8, and the Woody Harrelson survival thriller Last Breath has taken the largest drop, around 44%, sinking from No. 3 to No. 10.They have all made way for yet another debut. At No. 6, the new faith-based drama The Last Supper has earned an opening weekend of $2.8 million. The A24 horror movie Opus, which stars Ayo Edebiri and John Malkovich but earned a grim 40% Rotten Tomatoes score, wasn’t so lucky, debuting off the Top 10 chart entirely. It landed at No. 12 with just $1 million, underscoring how dismal this weekend was in spite of featuring five new wide releases.Previous projections for the Novocaine release showed the action-comedy set to potentially breach $10 million during its opening weekend with a much clearer lead at the domestic box office. However, this setback does not necessarily mean that it will suffer in theaters. It had a relatively slim budget of just $18 million, which likely places its break-even point somewhere around $45 million. It could still be a stretch for the movie to hit that milestone, but it represents a relatively low risk for distributor Paramount Pictures.Movies typically need to earn back at least two and a half times their budgets, because theaters keep half of ticket sales and marketing costs are not included in the production budget.This quiet debut has happened in spite of the fact that Novocaine reviews are quite solid. The movie has earned a Certified Fresh Rotten Tomatoes score of 81% with an even better audience score of 88%. However, the audience score could mean that the movie will balloon with good word of mouth. Should that be the case, it could follow in the footsteps of Jack Quaid’s January release Companion, a sci-fi thriller that cost $10 million and slowly and steadily made its money back with a $36.5 million gross worldwide after debuting at No. 2 with $9.3 million.The fact that Mickey 17, Novocaine, and Black Bag are struggling to prop up the domestic box office shows that the month is in desperate need of a tentpole. The release of the live-action Snow White remake next weekend will likely provide something of a boost, but even the Disney movie’s projections have been dwindling the nearer its debut comes. Thus, it may not be until the debuts of A Minecraft Movie in April or Marvel’s Thunderbolts* in May that the domestic box office properly rebounds after kicking off 2025 with a strong start that has quickly receded.Enjoy ScreenRant’s box office coverage? Click below to sign up for my weekly box office newsletter (make sure to check “Box Office” in your preferences) and get exclusive analysis, predictions, and more:Sign UpSource: VarietySuccess!Your comment has not been savedJack Quaid stars as Nathan Caine, a bank executive with congenital insensitivity to pain. When his girlfriend is kidnapped during a bank robbery, his rare condition becomes his greatest asset in a daring rescue mission.Success!Your comment has not been savedBlack Bag is a Steven Soderbergh directed thriller from Focus Features. Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, Regé Jean Page and Marisa Abela lead the cast, along with Naomie Harris, Pierce Brosnan, and Tom Burke. The story, which is currently under wraps, was written by David Koepp.Success!Your comment has not been savedMickey 17 is a science fiction film following Mickey Barnes, who faces an unusual employment situation with his job demanding a life-threatening level of commitment. The narrative explores themes of sacrifice and survival as Mickey navigates the complex challenges posed by his unique professional obligations.We want to hear from you! Share your opinions in the thread below and remember to keep it respectful.Your comment has not been savedThis thread is open for discussion.Be the first to post your thoughts.Novocaine makes an entertaining reference to the character Wolverine, which is even more laughable because of the movie Deadpool & Wolverine.This year has some amazing anime on the way, but Watanabe’s upcoming sci-fi action is one that fans have to check out.Jason Momoa will be the DCU’s Lobo, but it’s interesting to see how far back the plans to include him go despite his prominent role in the DCEU.A political consultant who worked on the Netflix series Zero Day breaks down whether the terrifying cyberattack could happen in real life.
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