The Box Office Just Endured One Of The Worst Weekends Of The Year So Far

It was no secret heading into 2024 that it was going to be a bumpy ride as far as the box office was concerned. Last year's SAG and WGA strikes ended up delaying tons of movies, giving us a sparse release calendar this year. Well, the sad state of affairs reared its terrible head this past weekend, which was one of the worst of the year so far. The industry at large can only cross its fingers and hope against hope that it gets better from here.

This past weekend saw three new movies hit theaters in the form of "Abigail," "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare," and "Spy x Family Code: White." Unfortunately, all three underperformed against relatively modest expectations. The vampire flick "Abigail" pulled in just $10 million, failing to take the crown away from A24"s "Civil War," which earned $11 million in its second weekend. The horror film, which hails from the filmmakers known as Radio Silence, had been expected to top the charts with around $12 million. In the end, it fell short.

Meanwhile, director Guy Ritchie's "Ungentlemanly Warfare," which boasts a star-studded cast led by Henry Cavill, opened to just shy of $9 million, coming in fourth place behind "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire" ($9.5 million), which is in its fourth weekend of release. Finally, the anime import "Spy x Family Code" made just shy of $5 million, landing at number five on the charts. It didn't manage to do nearly as well as other recent anime franchise films, including "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba — To the Hashira Training," which opened to $11.5 million at the end of February.

Overall, ticket sales for 2024 are down roughly 20% compared to this same point in 2023, per Variety. Total ticket sales for the weekend totaled around $65 million. The same weekend last year, that figure was around $125 million.

The key difference is that "Evil Dead Rise" opened this same weekend last year to $24.5 million, while "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" was in the middle of a tear that would see the movie top out with more than $1.3 billion, making it one of the biggest animated movies of all time. 2024 hasn't had any hits nearly that big, with "Dune: Part Two" ($696 million) currently ranking as the number one movie worldwide.

In short, it was a rough weekend all around. The fact that no newcomers could pull in even $12 million to the charts is a very bad sign. Before the pandemic, weekends with movies posting such low grosses at the top of the charts were exceedingly rare. In the pandemic era, they've sadly become more common. In 2023, we took major steps in the right direction. Unfortunately, with fewer big movies hitting theaters thanks to a pretty weak overall release calendar, we're doomed to suffer weekends like this. Now? All eyes are on summer to give theaters the wins they need.

Theaters never fully got back on their feet after the pandemic and the industry, as a whole, is not exactly thriving. Suffering another down year is something chains like AMC can ill-afford. As such, all eyes are on movies like "The Fall Guy" and "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes," which will help kick off summer in early May. Fair or not, the pressure is on for these movies and others to deliver the goods. The industry needs originals like "If" to draw out families. We need "Furiosa" to outperform "Fury Road." We need "Inside Out 2" to play like a Pixar movie of old. These are no longer luxuries; they are must-haves.

Last year's "Barbenheimer" was a once-in-a-generation phenomenon. It wouldn't be fair to bank on something similar happening again. We just need an old-school big summer full of big movies to help turn the tide.