Marvel’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever clutched the top spot at the box office for its second week, as awards season movies continue to struggle.
November film season has seen a lacklustre performance but Black Panther: Wakanda Forever remained to carry the month steadily despite its 63% drop in sales. Its $181 million opening led to a $209 million total domestic box office last weekend, then made only $67.3 million this past weekend. Additionally, other awards-nominated films have been struggling to hit their numbers, as noted by Box Office Mojo.
One of the reasons that could explain the low box office numbers of late could be due to many factors with the COVID-19 pandemic still hovering, the tensions continuing with the Ukraine-Russia war, and the economic strife with inflation continuing to increase worldwide. Do not even get me started with the issues at Twitter—many things to be furious about right now.
There was also the recent episode of “Video Archives Podcast” where Quentin Tarantino declared this was “the worst era in Hollywood history”—including it amongst the cinemas in the 1950s and ‘80s. He added, “The good thing about being in a bad era of Hollywood cinema is (the films) that don’t conform [are] the ones that stand out from the pack.”
The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film’s numbers were not terrible since it was the fourth-best overall weekend of the year and the fifth-best since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. To put this in a statistical perspective on second-weekend drops in the recent MCU films, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness dropped 67% and Thor: Love and Thunder dropped 68%. The first Black Panther film only had a 45% drop in its second weekend.
While the drops seem very bleak, the film has been on track to surpass Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and could join Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: Way of the Water as the highest-grossing films of the year. This prediction came as a result that the Thanksgiving holiday week will be taking place in the U.S. this upcoming weekend.
In second place, Searchlight’s twisted thriller dining genre film The Menu raked in $9 million for its opening weekend. The film stars Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Nicholas Hoult. The studio’s last hit was 2019’s Ready Or Not, which opened at $8 million but grossed $28.7 million domestically and $57.6 million worldwide—with a budget of only $6 million. The Menu had a $30 million budget, so hopefully, the numbers continue to climb as the month progresses.
Black Adam took fourth place at the box office, adding $4.5 million to its worldwide total of $366 million. While it appeared to be good numbers, the budget for the film was $200 million. The season’s biggest rom-com title Ticket To Paradise took fifth place by adding $3.2 million to its fifth weekend, totalling $159 million—not bad for a $60 million budget movie.
Probably the most shocking result at the box office this past weekend was She Said, opening in sixth place with a disappointing $2.25 million across 2,022 theatres. The film stars Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan as the New York Times journalists whose investigative reporting on Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct sparked the #MeToo movement. While the film had strong critic reviews and could be an awards contender, the numbers do not look good to make up for its $30 million budget.
Industry insiders like the chief analyst with Boxoffice Pro, Shawn Robbins noted how audiences were not looking for films that presented the bleakness of the world right now as so many issues have plagued the world. He shared, “It’s a tough sell. People are looking for escapism right now. Even adult audiences are looking for something that takes them away from reality.” While major franchise titles like Black Panther: Wakanda Forever continue to perform well at the box office, some smaller productions are expected to face an uphill battle.
