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‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Returns to No. 1 on Box Office Charts in Sixth Weekend of Release

By Rebecca Rubin

Rebecca Rubin

Senior Film and Media Reporter

• Box Office: ‘Garfield’ Scratches Up $22 Million Overseas Ahead of Domestic Debut 2 days ago
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• Without ‘Barbenheimer’ 2.0, Hollywood Needs ‘Deadpool 3,’ ‘Despicable Me 4’ and Other Sequels to Heat Up Summer Box Office 6 days ago

It’s Peter Parker’s world, we’re just living in it.

After a brief hiatus to let another movie sell a few tickets , “ Spider-Man: No Way Home ” has unseated “ Scream ” and reclaimed the top spot on domestic box office charts. Now in its sixth weekend of release, Sony’s comic book sequel added another $14.1 million from 3,705 North American venues between Friday and Sunday, enough for first place.

It’s rare for any film to secure the No. 1 slot in its sixth outing, though “Spider-Man: No Way Home” didn’t have much in the way of competition. In fact, you would be forgiven if you’d never even heard of this weekend’s two new nationwide releases: Universal’s faith-based romantic drama “ Redeeming Love ” and the Gravitas Ventures fantasy adventure “The King’s Daughter,” which was filmed eight years ago (and not in a Richard Linklater/ “Boyhood” way). Neither film managed to make a dent at the box office.

Plagued by searing reviews and the reality that most people likely don’t know it exists, “Redeeming Love” scraped together a dismal $3.7 million from 1,903 theaters. It’s the second consecutive box office dud for Universal following the studio’s star-studded misfire “The 355.” Universal is only distributing this film, so at least it isn’t on the hook for production fees. Since movie theaters have been light on new films in January, “Redeeming Love” was able to crack the top five, landing in fourth place behind “Scream” and Universal’s animated musical comedy “Sing 2.”

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Directed by D.J. Caruso (“xXx: Return of Xander Cage”), “Redeeming Love” combines a gold-rush setting with a parable about salvation and the oldest profession. Critics, who described “Redeeming Love” as “ pretty irredeemable ” and “ icky ,” were harsher than audiences, who seemed to like the film and awarded it a “B+” CinemaScore. Still, it’s unlikely the movie will be able to rebound in the coming weeks.

“Young adult romance is a small but vibrant genre, and faith-based movies have carved out a respectable niche, but the two rarely mix,” says David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research. He doesn’t expect “Redeeming Love” will resonate at the international box office. “These movies do not travel well abroad,” Gross adds.

The equally skewered “The King’s Daughter,” starring Pierce Brosnan as a French royal obsessed with his own immortality, debuted in eighth place with $750,000 from 2,170 screens. That’s easily one of the worst opening weekends of all time. Only a handful of films in history have generated less money at the box office while playing in more than 2,000 locations. Paramount Pictures, the movie’s initial distributor, may have been onto something when it shelved “The King’s Daughter” in 2015 , just three weeks before the film was scheduled to release. Gravitas Ventures bought the movie and changed the name in 2021.

“What is obvious,” wrote film critic Katie Walsh in  her review for the Los Angeles Times , “is that no amount of time on the shelf or tinkering with the special effects would have been enough to salvage the hot, chaotic and just plain kooky mess that is ‘The King’s Daughter.'”

Elsewhere at the box office, things looked (comparatively) brighter. “Scream” put up a good fight against the box office behemoth that is “No Way Home,” though the latest reboot in the long-running slasher series slid to second place. The well-received film generated $12.4 million from 3,666 venues, a 59% decline from opening weekend. Since debuting over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, “Scream” has made an impressive $51.3 million. Hey, not every movie can put up Spidey numbers.

Speaking of Marvel’s favorite web-slinger, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” has amassed a mammoth $721 million at the domestic box office to date. Those ticket sales make it the fourth-highest grossing domestic release in history, behind only “Avatar” ($760 million), “Avengers: Endgame” ($858 million) and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” ($936 million). Globally, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” has cemented its place as the sixth-biggest movie ever with $1.69 billion, passing “Jurassic World” ($1.67 billion) and “The Lion King” ($1.66 billion).

Though “Redeeming Love” won’t have anyone popping champagne on Universal’s lot, the studio had better luck with “Sing 2,” which brought in $5.7 million from 4,434 theaters in its fifth weekend of release. “Sing 2” has generated $128 million at the domestic box office and $241 million globally, making it the highest-grossing animated film in pandemic times. The movie surpassed Disney’s “Encanto” ($223 million) and Universal’s “Croods: A New Age” ($227 million) to notch that benchmark.

In fifth place, Disney and 20th Century’s “The King’s Man” collected $1.8 million from 3,260 locations in North America. The prequel in the “Kingsman” action franchise opened in December and has since grossed $31.5 million domestically and $105.3 million worldwide.

In North America, movie theater attendance may remain light until “Uncharted” with Holland (Feb. 18) and Robert Pattinson’s “The Batman” (March 4) open later in winter.

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Box office dispatch: how real is the boom and will it last.

"While I hesitate to say all audiences have returned, the trend line is moving closer to the point where most are willing," says one analyst as monthly revenue hits nearly $1 billion for the first time since the pandemic began.

By Pamela McClintock

Pamela McClintock

Senior Film Writer

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For the first time since the pandemic began, revenue at the domestic box office almost crossed $1 billion in June as some semblance of normalcy returned to the multiplex. Hollywood studios released a small army of event titles that found their audiences, but executives remain anxious about a gap in the calendar once the summer crush is over.

The last time combined ticket sales hit $1 billion in any given month was December 2019, when revenue climbed to $1.16 billion. Final figures show June 2022 revenue coming in at nearly $986 million, according to Comscore. That number received a last-minute boost thanks to Minions: The Rise of Gru , which pulled in a huge $10.8 million in Thursday afternoon previews on the last day of the month before opening to record-breaking numbers over the July Fourth weekend.

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In all, June was up a staggering 141 percent from June 2021’s $409.2 million, but down 11.6 percent from June 2019’s $1.114 billion.

“It’s still a massive achievement. And figuratively, if the month lands just a few pennies short of the $1 billion milestone, it’s no less impressive,” box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian of Comscore tells The Hollywood Reporter .

Still, June gloom is lingering for some box office observers.

“Publicly, there is a lot of celebration about the box office recovery,” one top studio executive tells THR . “Privately, there is a lot of concern about an upcoming lack of product.”

Adds another Hollywood executive: “We are still in a pandemic recovery mode and not back to pre-pandemic grosses and attendance, but the box office results this summer are significantly better than we expected .”

The boom was led by Paramount and Skydance’s Top Gun: Maverick , which has transformed into an unstoppable hit, grossing north of $1.11 billion globally since its Memorial Day release and still going strong a month later. The only other title to cross the $1 billion milestone in the pandemic era was December 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home (it rests at nearly $1.9 billion). The Top Gun sequel is significant because it attracted all audiences, not just superhero-obsessed fanboys. Also, both titles achieved the feat without China, where fewer and fewer Hollywood tentpoles are being released.

Among the movies fueling the rally, Marvel Studios’ Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness , released in early May, has crossed $950 million worldwide, while June’s Jurassic World Dominion stomped past $800 million globally over the July Fourth holiday weekend.

Warner Bros.’ Elvis — Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis Presley biopic — also danced its way to a major win when opening to a better than expected $51 million over the June 24-26 weekend, thanks to older moviegoers (nearly 30 percent of the opening weekend audience was over the age of 55).

Families have been another challenged demo during the pandemic, but that narrative is changing in a dramatic way with the debut of Illumination and Universal’s Minions: The Rise of Gru , which opened to a record-shattering $129 million (or more, once final tallies are in) over the long July Fourth weekend to secure one of the top starts of all time for an animated film, pandemic or no pandemic. Minions 2 helped ease the alarm bells that went off last month when June animated summer pic Lightyear , from Pixar and Disney, opened to a tepid $51 million domestically. And while Lightyear has now cleared the $200 million mark globally, including $100 million domestically, it is still considered a major disappointment.

Minions: The Rise of Gru completes the circle in terms of indicating that all segments of the audience are willing to consider resuming their pre-pandemic moviegoing habits, provided there is a variety of offerings.

“I think things are getting better. The biggest issue for the box office is content. When there is depth of product, people seem to be showing up,” says Wall Street analyst Eric Handler of MKM Partners. “We’re going to be in a typical summer deluge. Then there really isn’t very much to be had for a bit.”

While the July marquee has plenty of intriguing titles — including Thor: Love and Thunder (July 8), Nope (July 22) and DC League of Super-Pets (July 29) — the release calendar then becomes a huge question mark for several months in terms of event fare. One potential August breakout is Sony’s Bullet Train , starring Brad Pitt.

The next big superhero pic to arrive will be Warner Bros.’ Black Adam , which debuts Oct. 21 opposite the Julia Roberts-George Clooney rom-com A Ticket to Paradise , from Universal . A week earlier, Universal’s Halloween Ends opens in cinemas (the latter pic has plenty of potential but is still a genre title).

Analysts are counting on the Thanksgiving and Christmas box office to resume the momentum that recent weeks have enjoyed.

In terms of year-end tentpoles, some of the high-profile titles include Marvel’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Nov. 11), Disney’s Thanksgiving animated offering Strange World (Nov. 23), 20th Century’s Avatar: The Way of Water (Dec. 16), New Line’s Shazam! Fury of the Gods and DreamWorks Animation’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (both open Dec. 21), and Paramount’s Babylon on Christmas Day.

“Original films and low- to mid-tier releases before November will probably translate to a short ‘cool off’ period before movie-going ramps up again for the holidays going into a more fully formed 2023 release calendar,” says Shawn Robbins, a box office analyst with Boxoffice Pro .

Dergarabedian and Robbins are among numerous analysts who believe domestic revenue for 2022 can hit $7.5 billion to $8 billion, which would be about 70 percent of pre-pandemic levels. (In 2019, the North American box office recorded $11.4 billion in sales.)

Through July 4, 2022 domestic revenue clocked in at an estimated $3.9 billion, according to Comscore. That’s up nearly 250 percent from 2021, but down 32 percent from 2019. Summer revenue clocked in at $1.96 billion through July 4, up nearly 200 percent from the same period in 2021 and down 15 percent from 2019.

Says Robbins: “That’s a remarkable turnaround from where things stood one and two years ago. While I hesitate to say all audiences have returned, the trend line is moving closer to the point where most are willing.”

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Box Office Results

Follow the latest box office results for Hollywood movies now playing in theatres, presented using easy-to-read charts and graphics.

• Select Month
• Week 1 Begins 1/5/2024
• Week 2 Begins 1/12/2024
• Week 3 Begins 1/19/2024
• Week 4 Begins 1/26/2024
• Week 5 Begins 2/2/2024
• Week 6 Begins 2/9/2024
• Week 7 Begins 2/16/2024
• Week 8 Begins 2/23/2024
• Week 9 Begins 3/1/2024
• Week 10 Begins 3/8/2024
• Week 11 Begins 3/15/2024
• Week 12 Begins 3/22/2024
• Week 13 Begins 3/29/2024
• Week 14 Begins 4/5/2024
• Week 15 Begins 4/12/2024
• Week 16 Begins 4/19/2024
• Week 17 Begins 4/26/2024
• Week 18 Begins 5/3/2024

Total Box Office

Top openers, the fall guy (universal pictures).

Weekend: $28,500,000 | Weekly: $28,500,000

Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (2024 re-release) (20th Century Studios)

Weekend: $8,080,000 | Weekly: $8,080,000

Weekend: $120,808,937 | Weekly: $156,715,793

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

Weekend: $118,414,021 | Weekly: $152,701,178

Love Again (Screen Gems)

Weekend: $2,380,962 | Weekly: $3,456,881

Weekend: $187,512,284 | Weekly: $230,991,201

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

Weekend: $187,420,998 | Weekly: $230,859,523

Happening (IFC Films)

Weekend: $33,312 | Weekly: $41,305

Events This Week

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‘Godzilla x Kong’ Won’t Be Cursed By ‘The First Omen’ & ‘Monkey Man’ – Box Office Preview

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Anthony D'Alessandro

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No dart gun, or First Omen, or Monkey Man will put Legendary/Warner Bros’ Godzilla x Kong : The New Empire to sleep this weekend. The pic, after an unexpected $80 million Easter weekend start, will continue to rumble with a 55%-60% second-weekend drop to between $32M-$36M . Through four days, the Adam Wingard-directed Monsterverse title stands at $87.7M, fueled by 57% of K-12 schools out Monday and another 14% colleges. Expect more cash today as, per Comscore, there are 28% of K-12 school out, and 5% universities.

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Both movies are going after the 18-34 crowd, and both will share PLFs while Legendary rules supreme on Imax; First Omen is booked at 3,300 theaters, while Monkey Man has firmed up 3,000.

First Omen is looking to play to the middle of the country, in addition to potential older moviegoers who remember the original 1976 Richard Donner-directed movie starring Gregory Peck and Lee Remick, which was a hit back in the day with $60M domestic B.O. (unadjusted for inflation). This version is a prequel directed by filmmaker Arkasha Stevenson. Blurb: A young American woman is sent to Rome to begin a life of service to the church, but encounters a darkness that causes her to question her faith and uncovers a terrifying conspiracy that hopes to bring about the birth of evil incarnate.

No reviews yet, but Disney has been stoking genre fans with an early screening of the movie at Beyond Fest. Previews start Thursday at 7 p.m.. The First Omen cost in the low $30 millions before P&A.

Also wide at roughly 1,786 theaters is Fathom Events’ Someone Like You . Pic is based on the No. 1 New York Times bestseller by Karen Kingsbury. After the tragic loss of his best friend London Quinn, grieving young architect Dawson Gage launches an impossible search for her secret twin sister, twins separated as embryos. But Dawson never planned to fall in love. Tyler Russell directs Jake Allyn, Sarah Fisher and Lynn Collins. The movie is in previews and will play until April 11.

Per Comscore, the year-to-date box office for Jan. 1-March 31 is $1.64 billion, -6% from a year ago but only $106M down. That’s essentially equivalent to one tentpole. Despite rumors out there that theater owners are behind on their rental payments to major studios, I’m hearing that’s not the case. The box office is just beginning to pick up after the double-strike funk.

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2023 Box Office Lessons: Audiences Sought Comfort, Skipped Spectacle

Movie audiences flocked to Taylor Swift, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” but were cooler toward returning superheroes like the Flash, Captain Marvel and Aquaman.

By Brooks Barnes

Reporting from Los Angeles

Hollywood’s movie factories run on conventional wisdom — entrenched notions, based on experience, about what types of films are likely to pop at the global box office.

This year, audiences turned many of those so-called rules on their heads.

Superheroes have long been seen as the most reliable way to fill seats. But characters like Captain Marvel, the Flash, Ant-Man, Shazam and Blue Beetle failed to excite moviegoers. Over the weekend, “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” which cost more than $200 million to make and tens of millions more to market, arrived to a disastrous $28 million in ticket sales in the United States and Canada. Overseas moviegoers chipped in another $80 million.

In the meantime, the biggest movie of the year at the box office, “Barbie,” with $1.44 billion in worldwide ticket sales, was directed by a woman , based on a very female toy and spray-painted pink — ingredients that most studios have long seen as limiting audience appeal. An old movie-industry maxim holds that women will go to a “guy” movie but not vice versa.

“ The Super Mario Bros. Movie ” collected $1.36 billion, a second-place result that also stunned Hollywood; studios have a troubled history with game adaptations. “Oppenheimer,” a three-hour period drama about a physicist, rounded out the top three, taking in $952 million and contradicting the prevailing belief that, in the streaming era, films for grown-ups are not viable in theaters.

“Without question, change is afoot — audiences are in a different mood,” said David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box office numbers. “The country and the world are not in the same place. We’ve had seven years of divisive politics, a severe pandemic, two serious wars, climate change and inflation. Moviegoers seem less interested in being overwhelmed with spectacle and saving the universe than being spoken to, entertained and inspired.”

The biggest box office surprises of the year fell into the “spoken to” category. “ Sound of Freedom ,” a crime drama that cost $15 million to make, catered to the far right, an audience largely ignored by Hollywood, and generated $248 million in ticket sales, on a par with “The Eras Tour,” which targeted Taylor Swift fans and also cost about $15 million.

“Sound of Freedom” came from Angel Studios, an independent company in Provo, Utah, that supported the film with an unorthodox “Pay It Forward” program, which let supporters buy tickets online for those who otherwise might not see it. In a big break from Hollywood norms , Ms. Swift cut out the middle company (a studio) and made a distribution deal directly with AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest theater operator.

“Our phone has been dancing off the hooks since the day we announced the ‘Eras Tour’ project,” Adam Aron, AMC’s chief executive, told investors on a conference call in November, referring to “alternative content” opportunities.

Comscore, which compiles box office data, projected on Sunday that North American ticket sales for the year would reach about $9 billion, a 20 percent increase from 2022. (Before the pandemic, North American theaters reliably sold about $11 billion in tickets annually.) The average price for an adult general admission ticket in the United States was $12.14, up from $11.75, according to EntTelligence, a research firm.

Worldwide ticket sales are expected to exceed $33 billion, an increase of 27 percent, partly because of a surge in Latin America. (Before the pandemic, worldwide ticket sales easily exceeded $40 billion annually.)

Hollywood’s climb back from the pandemic is expected to stall in 2024. With fewer movies scheduled for release — studio pipelines were disrupted by the recent strikes — ticket sales will decline 5 to 11 percent next year, depending on the market, according to projections from Gower Street Analytics, a box office research firm.

Reading box-office tea leaves is like pontificating about symbolism in works of fiction: Any halfway plausible theory works. But studio bosses need something, anything, to guide them as they make billion-dollar judgment calls for the seasons ahead.

Here are five takeaways from this year:

Moviegoers want comfort.

People reach for nostalgia in times of stress, and movies that reminded audiences of the past — while also managing to feel fresh — have been succeeding. “Barbie,” “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Wonka” and the retro-feeling “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” allowed people to revisit their childhoods. “Insidious: The Red Door” hit pay dirt by bringing back the franchise’s original stars.

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” could have tapped into nostalgia to become a hit. Instead, a huffing and puffing Harrison Ford, 81, simply reminded Indy fans that they, too, are getting old. “Dial of Destiny” cost Disney $295 million to make and took in a flaccid $384 million. (Theaters keep roughly 50 percent of ticket sales.)

Art film has a pulse.

Sophisticated dramas with modest budgets and aimed at older audiences have been showing signs of life after two years in the box office I.C.U.

The streaming era has forever shifted the bulk of prestige film viewing to the home, analysts say. But theaters found a modicum of success in 2023 with offerings like “ Past Lives ,” a wistful drama with some Korean dialogue, and Hayao Miyazaki’s animated “The Boy and the Heron.” The bespoke “Asteroid City” managed $54 million.

Early box office results have also been promising for Oscar-oriented films like “ Poor Things ,” a surreal science-fiction romance, and “ American Fiction ,” a satire about a writer who puts together a fake memoir that turns on racial stereotypes.

Bigger is not better.

For the past decade, Hollywood has kept audiences interested in sequels by making each installment more bloated and often nonsensical than the last. Bigger! Faster! More!

That strategy may need rethinking — it’s just too expensive, analysts say, especially with Chinese moviegoers souring on American blockbusters. “Fast X,” the 10th movie in the “Fast and Furious” series, cost an estimated $340 million and took in $705 million worldwide, including $140 million in China. By comparison, “Furious 7” in 2015 cost $190 million and collected $1.5 billion, including $391 million in China.

Tom Cruise’s seventh “Mission: Impossible” spectacle, released in July in the wake of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” cost roughly $290 million to make and collected $568 million, including $49 million in China. The sixth “Mission: Impossible” in 2018 cost $178 million and generated $792 million, with Chinese ticket buyers chipping in $181 million.

Increasingly, franchise sequels and spinoffs need to feel fresh to succeed. Lionsgate, for instance, delved deeper into the High Table underground crime organization in “John Wick: Chapter 4” and introduced “Hunger Games” fans to a new story line (and cast) in the prequel “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.” Both movies were hits. Lionsgate even revived its “Saw” horror franchise by shifting the narrative back in time.

“Each of those movies did something different than the prior,” said Adam Fogelson, vice chair of the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group. “It wasn’t just ‘spend more, make it bigger, make it louder and cram in more action.’”

Some audience patterns remain intact.

Horror continued to be a reliable performer, with “ Five Nights at Freddy’s ” and “ M3gan ” starting new franchises for Universal and its Blumhouse affiliate. Together, the two films cost $32 million. They collected a combined $469 million. Also notable was “The Nun II,” which cost Warner Bros. about $38 million and took in $268 million.

Superheroes may be down, but they’re not out. Marvel’s rollicking, well-established “Guardians of the Galaxy” series returned for a third chapter and generated $846 million against a $250 million budget. Sony’s bold, anime-influenced “ Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse ” cost an estimated $150 million and collected $691 million.

Stars matter.

The conventional wisdom in Hollywood has been that movie stars are essentially part of the past. A celebrity name above the title no longer carries that much weight with ticket buyers. The underlying “intellectual property” is what fills seats.

People pay to see Barbie, not Margot Robbie.

Except that Mattel and various studios tried for at least 20 years to turn the toy into a live-action movie star. It took Ms. Robbie in the role (and Ryan Gosling as Ken) to finally make it happen. Other movies that benefited from star power in 2023 included “Wonka,” with Timothée Chalamet, and “Creed III,” anchored by Michael B. Jordan.

Stars don’t have heft? Try telling that to the producers of “Gran Turismo,” “Haunted Mansion,” “ Dumb Money ” and “ Strays ,” all of which disappointed at the box office and arrived when their casts were barred from promoting their work because of the SAG-AFTRA strike.

An earlier version of this article misstated figures for the movie “The Nun II.” It cost about $38 million, not $22 million, and took in $268 million, not $366 million.

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Brooks Barnes covers all things Hollywood. He joined The New York Times in 2007 and previously worked at The Wall Street Journal. More about Brooks Barnes

Tarot Scares Up a Bleak Weekend at the Global Box Office

• Sony's Tarot opens to disappointing numbers, finishing 4th at the box office.
• Despite meeting its production budget, Tarot 's global performance signifies challenges in the horror genre.
• Recent horror movies like The First Omen and Abigail have also under-performed, impacting the industry.

The latest in a string of studio horror movies to under-perform at the box office, Sony’s Tarot opened to soft numbers this past weekend. Written and directed by Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg , Tarot finished fourth on the domestic box office chart , behind the summer’s first tent-pole, The Fall Guy , and a 25-year-old film that most people don’t even like. Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace handily out-performed Tarot despite playing in less than half the number of domestic theaters, which isn’t something that Sony would be pleased about. To make matters worse, the film’s overseas performance was just as underwhelming .

With $6.5 million domestically and another $3.7 million from international territories, Tarot ’s cumulative global gross after one weekend of release stands at $10.2 million . While this was good enough for the film to recover its reported production budget of $8 million , the overall picture for the horror genre is looking especially bleak this year. While mainstream horror films have always attracted relatively poor reviews , this rarely seemed to impact the audience’s interest in watching them. But this year, several scary movies in a row have failed to live up to expectations .

Tarot follows a group of friends who rent out a mansion and witness terrifying events after messing around with dark magic. Reviews have been toxic, for the most part. Tarot sits at a “rotten” 12% approval rating on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , which is low even for a horror title. The audience approval rating isn’t much better, at 58%. The film earned a C- CinemaScore from opening day audiences , which is standard for the horror genre. In her review , Collider’s Emma Kiely highlighted the “clown scene,” but added that the film suffers from a basic plot and poor character work, making it an “unmemorable experience.”

Can M. Night Shyamalan Lift the Horror Movie Curse of 2024 with 'Trap'?

Tarot ’s $6.5 million debut is only marginally higher than the $5.3 million that Neon’s Immaculate opened to some weeks ago. Despite Sydney Sweeney ’s star power, the movie has essentially concluded its run with around $15 million domestically and $22 million worldwide, which feels like a realistic target for Tarot as well. Recent weeks have also seen similar horror misfires such as The First Omen ($50 million worldwide against a reported budget of $30 million), and more recently, Abigail ($34 million worldwide against a reported budget of $28 million). What’s more surprising is that The First Omen under-performed despite built-in franchise recognition, and Abigail couldn’t live up to the streak of success that directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett had been on just 12 months ago. Both movies also earned solid reviews.

The industry hasn’t had a major horror hit since last year’s Five Nights at Freddy’s — an anomaly if there ever was one, considering it was also released day-and-date on the Peacock streaming service. Starring Harriet Slater , Adain Bradley , Avantika Vandanapu , Wolfgang Novogratz , Humberly González , Larsen Thompson , Jacob Batalon , and Olwen Fouéré , Tarot is playing in theaters. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.

Tarot (2024)

When a group of friends recklessly violates the sacred rule of Tarot readings they unknowingly unleash an unspeakable evil trapped within the cursed cards. One by one, they come face to face with fate and end up in a race against death.

Release Date May 3, 2024

Director Anna Halberg, Spenser Cohen

Cast Wolfgang Novogratz, Avantika, Larsen Thompson, Humberly Gonzlez, Harriet Slater, Jacob Batalon, Adain Bradley, Olwen Four

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The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time. The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time. The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time.

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South OTT Releases May 2024: Manjummel Boys, Aavesham & More

By Aditi Rathi

South movies have taken the box office by storm. With back-to-back hits, Malayalam cinema has surprised the audience. On the other hand, Kannada, Telugu, and Tamil cinema have movies ranging from romance dramas to action and comedy. In May, several such films are set to make their digital debuts. From Manjummel Boys to Aavesham, they will be available to stream on OTT platforms.

Here’s a list of South movies arriving on OTT platforms in May:

Manjummel Boys

The latest Malayalam survival thriller, Manjummel Boys, created history at the box office. Based on a true story, the movie is an ode to friendship. Helmed by Chidambaram, the movie was released in theaters on February 22, 2024. After its massive success, the film was dubbed in Telugu for a new target audience. Following its exclusive theatrical release, the movie allegedly earned $28 million at its worldwide box office.

It follows the story of a group of friends from Kerala, who visit the infamous Guna Caves. During their expedition, one of the friends falls deep into the caves. Despite several attempts to save their friend, the entire group’s efforts go in vain. Will they be able to rescue their pal?

Manjummel Boys will make its digital debut on Disney+ Hotstar in five languages: Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, and Kannada. It will be available to stream on May 5, 2024. It is one of the most prominent South movies premiering on OTT this month.

Aadujeevitham

Starring Prithviraj Sukumaran in the lead role, Aadujeevitham, aka The Goat Life, is another Malayalam flick based on a true story. The movie follows the tale of an Indian laborer, Najeeb, who goes to an Arab country in search of work. However, he is wronged by his agent and is forced to herd goats in the middle of a never-ending desert. As a result, he makes several attempts to escape the horrible conditions but fails. How he survives in the desert and whether he escapes the conditions shapes the plot of the movie.

So far, the movie has reportedly earned over $18.9 million at the box office worldwide. From May 10, 2024, it is all set to entertain the audience on Disney+ Hotstar.

Aavesham is another hit Malayalam movie helmed by Jithu Madhavan. With Fahadh Faasil’s unique role, the movie has thoroughly entertained the audience. Several celebrities, including Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Nayanthara, and others, have praised the film. Reportedly , the movie has grossed a whopping $15.4 million at the box office worldwide.

After about five weeks of its release, the movie will be available to stream on Amazon Prime Video from May 17, 2024. Aavesham is the story of three young men who move to Bengaluru to pursue higher studies. When they get involved in a fight with one of their seniors, they seek help from a local Malayali gangster.

Vishal returned to the silver screens with another action drama, Rathnam, on April 26, 2024. The movie opened to mixed reviews but has remained stable at the box office. Since it has been only a few days since the movie’s theatrical release, its digital release date has yet to be revealed. However, as per the four-week rule that most South movies follow, the latest film might arrive on an OTT platform by the end of May. Reportedly , Amazon Prime Video has bagged the movie’s streaming rights.

In conclusion, the month of May has several movies making its digital debut. However, a few newly released South films are yet to disclose their OTT release dates. Meanwhile, the above-mentioned list has a lot of thrill, comedy, action, and drama for viewers to enjoy.

Always lookin' for what's cookin', Aditi is a fan of American sitcoms and Indian cinema. The combination is as quirky as she is. Apart from writing all day, you can catch her playing with her street dogs, painting, or cooking.

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Studios are sacrificing 2024’s blockbuster movies to boost 2025’s box office

Here’s why distributors think 2025 will be a huge year for movies — and what studios are doing to ensure it

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Movie theaters, and the studios that provide their content, have been clawing their way out of a financial crater ever since the COVID-19 pandemic began. After Avengers: Endgame , the live-action Lion King , and Todd Phillips’ Joker helped fuel record-breaking box-office returns in 2019, the pandemic-era lockdowns froze theaters in their tracks, and the subsequent thaw has been slow and difficult for every industry that touches cinema .

An impressive 2023 box-office take, led by Barbenheimer , the Mario brothers , Miles Morales , and more, doesn’t necessarily mean movie theaters are on sustainable financial footing at this point. But it is a hopeful sign that they’re returning to full strength, with some room to grow. There’s more hope on the horizon, too: Projections from movie theater analyst Eric Wold indicate that box-office numbers will finally return to almost 2019 levels in 2025 . For better or worse, movie studios are greeting those projections by saving many of their intended blockbusters for next year.

The hope for a strong 2025 was repeated over and over again like a mantra at this year’s CinemaCon, the annual Las Vegas conference that gathers studios, theater owners, and theatrical technology companies to discuss the state of moviegoing and preview the studios’ offerings for the next couple of years. Everyone from studio executives to theater owners with just one screen to program were touting the return of theaters with hope and some quiet trepidation — for good reason in both cases.

Despite the box office’s continual rise over the last few years , the post-quarantine era has still been tremendously difficult for movie theaters. And while 2024 profits are projected to exceed 2023’s, the gains are still likely to be more gradual than anyone hoped, both because of slow economic growth overall, and because of Hollywood’s Writers Guild and Screen Actors Guild strikes last year. Even with the theatrical business recovering, the margins are still pretty delicate . Getting box-office returns back to pre-COVID levels would offer everyone in the business a sigh of relief and a moment to look forward to the future.

But reality doesn’t always match economic projections. For the box office to actually hit its prognosticated marks, theater owners need a whole lot of exciting movies to screen, a note studios have really taken to heart, if the already packed 2025 calendar is any indication.

The hope for 2025’s box-office recovery has become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Here’s the argument: If more people will see movies in 2025, it stands to reason that studios would want to release their biggest movies then, instead of in 2024. At the same time, people go to theaters to see movies they’re excited about, so a schedule of new blockbusters and exciting movies from every studio week after week should fan the flames. Those two simple points form a perfect logical circle that seems on track to give us one of the most stacked blockbuster lineups in years. The only real loser is 2024’s movie slate.

While there are some surefire hits this year, like Dune: Part Two , Godzilla x Kong: A New Empire , and Moana 2 , this year’s blockbuster lineup is largely a list of also-rans. Three of the biggest movies are from Sony’s Spider-Man spinoff series rather than a slate of Marvel or DC blockbusters. Several of the intended hits have already fallen flat . The best bets on the 2024 calendar seem to be the slew of animated movies that will hopefully keep the rest of the box office afloat, along with a few likely hits, like Deadpool & Wolverine or Joker: Folie à Deux , and some small- and mid-budget standouts, like Civil War and Bob Marley: One Love , which are breaking through to audiences due to fewer blockbusters crowding the theaters.

What’s coming out in 2025? Here’s what is on deck:

Paddington in Peru , Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17 , Captain America: Brave New World , The Smurfs Movie (aka the Rihanna musical), Ryan Coogler’s untitled vampire movie, Disney Snow White , Fast X: Part 2 , Minecraft , M3GAN 2.0 , Mission: Impossible 8 , the John Wick spinoff Ballerina , Pixar’s Elio , the live-action How to Train Your Dragon , a new Jurassic World movie, Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s Kendrick Lamar musical, Superman: Legacy , Fantastic Four , The Bad Guys 2 , a new Paul Thomas Anderson movie, Saw XI , The Bride , Tron: Ares, Blade , Wicked: Part 2 , Zootopia 2 , The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants , Avatar 3

Comparing this year’s lineup to 2025, though, we immediately start to see a very different picture, and an embarrassment of riches on the horizon. Next year includes everything from highly anticipated comic book movies like Marvel’s Fantastic Four refresh and James Gunn’s full DC reboot to a John Wick spinoff, a new Mission: Impossible movie, a new entry in the Fast & Furious franchise, a new Jurassic World movie, and even the next movie in James Cameron’s Avatar series . Those franchise installments will stand alongside new projects from big-name directors like Bong Joon-ho, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Ryan Coogler. And that’s just what’s been announced so far.

With all due respect to Sonic and Mufasa , who both have new movies coming out at the end of 2024, it’s tough to compete with a year that includes an Avatar sequel. 2024’s lack of massive standouts may hurt the year’s box office, but as CinemaCon 2024’s unofficial mantra suggested, that’s all right, because 2025 is coming to set things right! Looking at the planned lineup, that analysis really might measure up. 2024 is going to continue to be a good year to go to the movies, but not a great one. For that, you’ll have to wait until 2025, the year movies finally come back — hopefully.

Not all of this is something Hollywood did by choice. While Marvel certainly took a conscious step back from its normally packed release calendar in 2024, movies including Avatar 3 and Mission: Impossible 8 got bumped because of delays during the WGA and SAG strikes in 2023. There are likely even a few movies on 2025’s packed schedule that will get shifted to 2026 for one reason or another — in fact, Matt Reeves’ The Batman 2 already has been. Even still, it’s more intriguing-sounding blockbusters than we’d normally see on a single year’s roster.

Releasing all these movies at once is only half the battle for Hollywood. The movies have to be good to make it past opening weekend in theaters, and even if they are good, there’s no guarantee they’ll all find traction in such a competitive market.

In the pre-pandemic blockbuster era, the biggest movies would live and die by their opening-weekend gross, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in their first few days, which would often indicate how well the movie would continue to do in the following weeks. However, in the last couple of years, some of the biggest hits, like Elemental , Sound of Freedom , Five Nights at Freddy’s , Anyone but You , and even Barbie and Oppenheimer , had fairly quiet openings compared to their final box-office totals, thanks in large part to positive word of mouth and multiple repeat viewings.

What this means for studios is that it may be advantageous to keep blockbusters in theaters longer, giving them more time to find viewers. Audiences didn’t stop going to the Mario movie simply because Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 came out. They went to both — and that’s not to mention the dual success of Barbenheimer. It may be harder to hang on to theatrical slots for months on end in 2025, though, with such a packed schedule.

But the density of major releases in 2025 reflects a concern theater owners reiterated at CinemaCon too: They’d rather have a calendar that includes 52 weeks of quality movie releases than have a few massive blockbusters all year long, with largely deserted gaps in between. They want to offer their paying customers something new and interesting every single week.

Studios have typically shied away from keeping their own movies in theaters for long periods, which can put their own tentpole releases into competition with each other and with the biggest releases from other studios. But with 2025 packed to the gills with movies, it seems like studios may have decided to lean into the chaos and accept a little friendly rivalry between the biggest entrants on the calendar. Getting audiences back into theaters is what matters, no matter what they’re seeing.

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