Argylle 'Won' The Worst Super Bowl Weekend At The Box Office Ever

Super Bowl weekend is not, historically, an overly fruitful weekend at the box office. The masses of the United States are more concerned about the big game and Hollywood, by and large, doesn't want to compete with that. That's why there were no big new releases out this past weekend. But as a result, that left theaters out to dry. With only "Lisa Frankenstein" to help carry the load, we ended up with the worst Super Bowl weekend ever at the box office. This dumps even more rain on the rained-out parade that is the 2024 box office thus far.

Director Matthew Vaughn's "Argylle" ended up taking the top spot on its second weekend with a dismal $6.5 million. That represents a sharp 63% drop compared to its opening weekend take of $17.4 million. Be that as it may, it still clung onto number one for at least one more week. That's because the horror/comedy "Lisa Frankenstein," which hails from Focus Features, made just $3.8 million in its debut, which was well below even modest industry expectations heading into the weekend. It was rough all around.

"Argylle," which Apple spent around $200 million on, has now made just $60 million worldwide. Granted, it was ultimately a streaming play for Apple TV+ but the return on investment here is probably going to be tough to justify. Meanwhile, "Lisa Frankenstein" cost just $13 million, so Focus should be able to avoid disaster here even with the low opening. The bigger problem is that the movie couldn't scare up enough buzz to sell a meaningful number of tickets on a dreadfully slow weekend.

Ticket sales, overall, struggled to get to $42 million for the weekend, making it the worst Super Bowl box office ever, per Variety. Unfortunately, Bleecker Street's horror movie "Out of Darkness" also opened and made just $1 million on nearly 900 screens, which didn't help matters. Warner Bros. tried to do its part by re-releasing "Dune," with the 2021 blockbuster pulling in another $1.6 million. Disney's re-release of "Turning Red" was DOA, pulling in just $535,000. While those efforts are appreciated, they didn't do much to move the needle.

As I've discussed a great deal in recent weeks, the box office is in dire straits. Overall ticket sales are down at least 10% compared to 2023 so far, and meaningful help isn't coming until March when heavy-hitters such as "Dune: Part Two" and "Kung Fu Panda 4" arrive. But can any of those big upcoming movies do well enough to make up for the dreadful first two months of the year? That remains to be seen. Ideally, the studios would have, collectively, re-arranged some things to ensure that January and February were a bit more robust. That didn't happen, so here we are. 

Now, we look ahead to Valentine's Day when both "Bob Marley: One Love" and "Madame Web" arrive in theaters. That should give the box office a shot of life, it's just a matter of whether or not one (or both) of those films can break out in a truly meaningful way. If not, the rest of the month figures to be equally bleak.

"Argylle" and "Lisa Frankenstein" are in theaters now.