This past weekend coincided with the year-end finals of the American Football League, the Super Bowl, and the North American box office naturally plummeted. After the opening box office of Universal Pictures and DreamWorks' animated film "Detective Dog" exceeded expectations, the box office in the second weekend was still strong, earning $13.7 million in three days, continuing to sit firmly at the top of the box office chart.
Stills from Bloody Eyes
There were also two new films that dared to be released on a large scale during the Super Bowl over the weekend: Sony Pictures' horror film "Heart Eyes" was released in 3,102 theaters in North America, and eventually earned $8.5 million at the opening; Universal Pictures' action film "Love Hurts" was also released in 3,055 theaters in North America, and its opening box office was only $6.87 million, ranking second and third on the weekend box office list respectively.
Stills from "The Ex-Killer"
"Ex" is the first time that Chinese-American actor Guan Jiwei, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for "The Blink of an Eye", has played the leading role in his 40 years of career. Daniel Wu, who is three years younger than him, plays the villain in the film. The purpose of focusing on the Asian American audience market is quite clear, but the box office results do not seem to be ideal at present. Of course, the production costs of "The Ex" and "Ex" are only 18 million US dollars. Even if the box office is not very high, plus various copyright income in the later stage, it should not be difficult to recover the cost. After entering 2025, many low-cost theater works like this have appeared one after another, which clearly reflects the new ideas of Hollywood film companies in cost control.
Sony and Universal chose this period to invest in low-cost new films, naturally hoping to attract the support of those audiences who don't like watching the "Super Bowl", including young female audiences. However, this year's "Super Bowl" will feature the Kansas City Chiefs, and star player Travis Kelce's girlfriend Taylor Swift will also be there as expected, which will surely shift the attention of many young women to the football game on Sunday.
The same situation happened last year. However, Argyle, which ranked first in the box office last weekend, only had a weekend box office of 6.5 million US dollars. The film was released in 3,605 theaters in North America at the time. On average, the box office revenue of each theater was only 1,803 US dollars throughout the weekend. If converted into the number of moviegoers, it means that during the three days of the "Super Bowl" weekend last year, only about 60 to 70 people chose to go to the theater to watch Argyle every day. Such an unpopular work can actually become the weekend box office champion, which is indeed a wonder that has not appeared in the North American film market for many years.
Stills from "Detective Dog"
In comparison, the box office champion of the same period this year, "Detective Dog", took in $13.7 million, which can be said to be a considerable improvement. Similarly, the total North American box office this weekend was about $55 million, which was not only a significant increase from the $42 million of the same period last year, but also the best result of the "Super Bowl" weekend since 2020.
Historically, the Super Bowl has had a significant impact on the film market, but in the past, some films have been able to surprise and succeed this weekend with their reliable quality and word-of-mouth effect. For example, in the 2015 Super Bowl weekend, "American Sniper", which had been released for six weeks, fought its way out and earned an astonishing $30.7 million at the box office; and this weekend in 2020, "Bad Boys for Life", which had been released for three weeks, also earned $17.6 million at the box office. Comparing these two works, the situation of "Detective Dog" can only be described as "there is no general in Shu, Liao Hua is the vanguard."
In addition, none of the top ten movies in the weekend box office list was nominated for this year's Oscars. "Anora", which won three awards in a row, was still only released in 229 theaters, with a weekend box office of $53,700; "The Conversation" was only released in 234 theaters, with a weekend box office of $35,000; "Wild Men" was released in 1,115 theaters, with a weekend box office of $910,000; the best performance was "Nobody", which received a weekend box office of $1.24 million in 1,305 theaters, and the total North American box office so far has reached nearly $70 million.
One of the main features of this year's Oscar Best Picture nominees is that there are both popular works such as "Wicked", "Dune 2" and "Something Substantial", as well as niche works that are not very familiar to mainstream American audiences, such as "I'm Still Here" and "Five Cents Boy". The latter category has a very small release scale; even works such as "Anora" and "Brutalists" that have great hope of winning the Oscar, although film peers and professional film critics unanimously applaud, still have little presence among the general public. In contrast, the last awards season had "Barpenheimer", and the one before that had "Blink", "Avatar 3" and "Top Gun 2". It is probably not an exaggeration to say that this is the Oscar with the least public attention in recent years.
More direct evidence is reflected in the North American box office of Oscar-nominated films. So far, this year's data is nearly 40% lower than the same period last year. Even "September 5th", which was nominated for Best Original Screenplay this year, was released in only 400 theaters in North America at most. The publicity funds invested by the distributor Paramount were also insufficient. Then in mid-February, the film was put on the streaming platform and quickly lost in the vast ocean of "content".
