The North American film market last weekend continued to welcome the large-scale release of original works. However, their box office performance was not very outstanding. This also seems to confirm from the side that to save the North American box office market, it is still necessary to rely on various series of movies with strong IP. Overall, the total box office this weekend was only 65 million US dollars, a staggering 36% drop compared with the same period last year.

The top of the weekend box office chart is "Challengers," a sports romance film produced by Amazon MGM Studios. The film was created by Luca Guadagnino, who directed "Call Me by Your Name," and starred Zendaya. It tells the story of a "threesome" love relationship between competitive tennis players.

Stills from "Challenger"

The script of "The Challenger" comes from new screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes. He is a top student who graduated from the philosophy department of Brown University, a prestigious Ivy League private school. He has written stage plays and novels, but this is his first time writing a film script. But just based on this work, he has occupied a place on the list of "Top Ten New Screenwriters Worth Watching" selected by Hollywood media Variety.

It is worth mentioning that Kuritzkis' wife is Celine Song, a Korean-American filmmaker who made a splash last year with "The Past". The two have lived and worked in New York for many years. If nothing unexpected happens, they will soon become another successful couple in the American independent film industry after Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, and Wang Ziyi and Barry Jenkins.

Over the three days of the weekend, "The Challenger" was released in 3,477 theaters in North America and earned $15.01 million in the opening box office. This result is barely acceptable for a work of this type. However, compared with its production cost of $55 million, there is actually a lot of pressure to make back the cost.

Back in 2017, director Luca Guadagnino's famous work "Call Me by Your Name" chose a small-scale release route in North America, and at most it was only released in 900 theaters. The film eventually earned $18.09 million at the North American box office. And the horror film "Suspiria" directed by him later had a maximum screening scale of only 300 theaters. In 2022, "Bone and All" was released in more than 2,700 theaters during the Thanksgiving period at the end of the year. Calculated in five days, it earned $3.61 million in the opening box office, and the final North American box office was only $7.83 million, which is not a very good result even taking into account the epidemic.

Therefore, for Guadagnino personally, the opening performance of "The Challenger" is the highest point in his screen career and is worth celebrating. However, for the entire North American film market, such figures are not enough to quench their thirst.

The media reviews of "The Challenger" are very good, and it maintains an 87% freshness on the film review website "Rotten Tomatoes". In addition, I believe that many viewers went to the theater just for Zendaya. The 27-year-old made her debut in the Disney Channel original series. In recent years, she has performed well in the "Spider-Man" and "Dune" series of movies. She also won two TV Emmy Awards for starring in and producing the HBO hit series "Euphoria". Speaking of which, this time "The Challenger" is her first time to truly play the leading role in a movie.

Stills from Unsung Heroes

In addition to "Challenger", there are two other new films that were released on a large scale over the weekend, and they are all from Lionsgate. The gospel-themed music biopic "Unsung Hero" was released in 2,832 theaters and earned $7.75 million in the opening box office, ranking second on the weekend box office list. The film cost only $6 million to produce, and Lionsgate, which has always been frugal, did not invest much in publicity. It seems that profitability should not be a problem.

Stills from "The Boy Who Destroyed the World"

On the other hand, the revenge action film "Boy Kills World" starring Bill Skarsgård was also scheduled to be released in 1,993 theaters by Lionsgate, but it only earned $1.67 million at the opening box office, ranking tenth on the weekend box office list.

Due to the lack of new movies, film producers re-screened old movies this weekend. As a result, 1979's "Alien" and 1999's "The Mummy" earned $1.6 million and $1 million respectively in three days over the weekend. By comparison, you can see how unpopular the new movie "The Boy Who Lost His Life" is with the audience.

Last week, IMAX released its quarterly report. Although Dune 2 performed strongly throughout March and was sold out, it could not change the overall sluggish trend of the North American film market. IMAX's revenue in North America in the first quarter of 2024 fell by 9% year-on-year, from $86.9 million to $79 million.

In the first three months of 2023, IMAX's revenue in the first quarter was quite outstanding, thanks to several blockbuster films such as "Avatar: The Way of Water", "Ant-Man 3" and "The Wandering Earth 2". However, this year, due to last year's Hollywood strike, there were problems with the supply of new films, which directly affected IMAX's film sources. Throughout 2024, it can be said that only "Dune 2" is a blockbuster that is really worth going to IMAX to appreciate. Therefore, 54% of IMAX's global box office revenue of US$261 million in the first quarter of this year came from "Dune 2".

At this point, April 2024 is about to end, and the North American film market is about to usher in the first weekend of May. If not, many people may have forgotten: starting with "Iron Man" in 2008, North American audiences will usher in a Marvel movie on the first weekend of May every year. Excluding 2020 and 2021, which were affected by the epidemic, this "tradition" has continued for a full 14 years, and this year, it finally came to an end. Last year's "Guardians of the Galaxy 3" became the last Marvel movie to be released on the first weekend of May. This year's "Deadpool and the Brink" has been scheduled for July. In 2025, "Captain America 4" will be scheduled to be released on Valentine's Day in February.

Over the past decade, the summer season has been moved forward to May due to the regular release of Marvel movies. This year and next, without the Marvel movies scheduled to be released in May, it is still unknown whether the summer season will be redefined and whether it can still ignite the enthusiasm of American moviegoers as in the past.