Box Office: Spider-Man: No Way Home dominates for the fourth weekend in a row

Spider-Man: No Way Home easily retained its position as the number one movie in America for the fourth weekend in a row while the lone new arrival, The 355, was DOA.

Spider-Man: No Way Home grossed $33 million over the weekend which represented a 41% decline from the previous frame. The hold is pretty solid coming off of a holiday weekend which only proves that the film is being driven by word of mouth and repeat business. Tracking actually had the film grossing about $30 million in weekend four and the fact that it came out $3 million ahead shows that Spidey is pretty immune to that Omicron variant. As far as post-New Year’s weekends go, No Way Home is ahead of The Last Jedi ($23.7 million), Rogue One ($22 million), and Rise of Skywalker ($15.1 million). Our favorite wall-crawler is only behind Force Awakens ($42.3 million). With a domestic total of $668.7 million and counting, the film is now the sixth-highest grossing movie at the domestic box office, ahead of James Cameron’s Titanic ($659.3 million). The film is only around $10 million away from taking the fifth spot from Avengers: Infinity War ($678.8 million). Overseas, the film took in another $64.4 million from 63 markets to bring its global haul to $1.53 billion.

Sing 2 maintains its position in second place with a gross of $11.9 million. The animated sequel also fell 41% from the previous weekend and continues to be the only other film from the holiday frame to put up solid grosses behind Spider-Man. It should be noted that Sing 2 became available in homes to be rented on Friday and still showed some strength at the box office. Sing 2 has grossed $109 million domestically to date which makes it the highest-grossing animated movie of the pandemic at the domestic box office. Families will come out during this period for the right film and this only makes me scratch my head more at Disney’s decision to send Pixar’s Turning Red to Disney+ instead of giving it a theatrical release. Overseas, Sing 2 took in $17 million from 54 international markets to bring its global total to $190.8 million.

In third, we have the arrival of The 355 which stalled with a gross of $4.8 million. On paper, this seemed like the perfect film for Universal Pictures to acquire for $20 million given the diversity of its cast and putting kickass ladies front and center of their very own action film. There was definite franchise potential here, on paper, but it was quickly undone once early reviews came in ahead of the weekend. The film registered a very rotten score of 27% and those negative reviews spread pretty quickly. The movie did score a decent “B+” Cinemascore from opening day audiences but that won’t be enough to generate much heat for the film down the line. So why didn’t this go streaming? Star Jessica Chastain approached director Simon Kinberg about making an all-female spy ensemble. They then reached out to Penelope Cruz, Lupita Nyong’o, Diane Kruger, and Bingbing Fan with the pitch to make the film outside of the Hollywood system which would allow them to retain fiscal ownership and authorship of the $75 million production and share in the film’s upside in various percentages. These tight deals likely didn’t allow for streaming to be an option. Given its low opening weekend, the film only has to respect the 17-day theatrical window before going to PVOD and after 45 days the movie will be on the Peacock streaming service for four months before heading to Amazon Prime where it will be free to members for another ten months. Perhaps through all of these avenues, SOME money can be made from The 355 but not much.

In fourth, we have The King’s Man which slipt a slim 28% to $3.2 million. Honestly, it’s not a bad hold for the film but The King’s Man needed a much bigger start to call some of its recent grosses a win. I’m not sure why the movie is holding so well now but at least it can say it’s still in the top five while The Matrix Resurrections, an arguably higher-profile release, is already out. The King’s Man has grossed $25 million at the domestic box office to date and after pulling in $13.4 million overseas from 43 international markets, the film brings its global haul to $74.3 million.

Rounding out the top five is American Underdog with a gross of $2.4 million. Slipping 35% from the previous weekend, American Underdog has found it hard to break out of its faith-based fan support and is actually coming in a bit lower than most films that come from this sub-genre. American Underdog has grossed $18.7 million to date.

Before wrapping up the box office, I need to call out a win for adult-skewing films because they have had rough luck pulling in decent money during the pandemic. After placing tenth this weekend and grossing $632,348, House of Gucci brought its domestic total to $50 million. This makes it the highest-grossing older-skewing drama of the pandemic. I think we can mostly thank Lady Gaga for the assist here. After grossing $4 million from 46 overseas markets, the film brings its global total to $65.4 million.

What are YOUR thoughts on this weekend’s box office results?