It’s the best of times and worst of times at the box office. 2025 has clicked past $1.08 billion (in fact it did last weekend), +11% over the same Jan. 1-March 2 frame a year ago, but this weekend is now coming in at $53.3M per Comscore, which would make it the lowest frame of the year to date, under Super Bowl; the box office org measuring a previous low of $55.8M for all titles on that Feb. 7-9 weekend. What did we have a year ago at this time? Legendary/Warner Bros’ Dune: Part Two with $82.5M leading an $114.6M frame. Next weekend, is Warner Bros. $118M Bong Joon Ho sci-fi feature Mickey 17; the director’s first since his multi-Oscar winning 2020 title Parasite.
Disney/Marvel Studios’ Captain America: Brave New World is leading with a $15M third weekend, -47%, that hold attributed to Imax screens and besting the third frame holds of Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania (-60%, which saw its PLFs and Imax stole by Creed 3) and Thor Love & Thunder (-52%).
Focus Features‘ Woody Harrelson and Simu Liu deepsea diver thriller Last Breath off a B+, 4 1/2 stars PostTrak and a 61% definite recommend is only filing $7.8M for the three-day. Very good scores. Focus Features’ picked up North America for $5M, I hear. The pic is produced by Paul Brooks’ Gold Circle Films which is behind My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 ($10M opening) and another Woody Harrelson film, Champions ($5.1M), both of which Focus released.
NEON’s second weekend of The Monkey per estimates is coursing to a better hold than anticipated, -55% with $6.3M. That hold is in the range of A24’s Heretic (-54%) and Uni’s Cocaine Bear (-52%) in their second weekends and better than Companion‘s second weekend (-68%) and Wolf Man‘s (-70%).
Audience breakdown for Last Breath is 51% men leading, with 18% of the audience between 18-24 years old, 26% of the audience between 25-34 years old (biggest demo) and 53% of the audience 35+ years old. Diversity demos are 51% Caucasian, 23% Latino and Hispanic, 10% Black, 7% Asian, and 9% Native American/other. Best markets are South Central, Mountain and West for the Alex Parkinson directed adult skewing title with the AMC Burbank pulling ahead as the pic’s best multiplex gross in the national with around $16K so far.
RelishMix reports that the pre-release social media stats on the pic were light, running 60% below drama thriller genre norms across TikTok, Facebook, X, YouTube and Instagram combined at 37.2M.
iSpot shows that Focus spent roughly half on TV linear ads for Last Breath ($5.1M) than they did for their second-highest grossing hit of all-time stateside, Nosferatu ($10.9M), but that not far from their Oscar nominated Best Picture, Conclave ($6.1M).
Muscling just under the top 10 was Roadside Attractions’ Jennifer Coolidge-Ed Harris-Bill Murray mob family comedy Riff Raff with $901K, this despite soft numbers, we understand.
GKIDs has the Kazuya Tsurumaki directed Mobile Sult Gundam GQuuuuuuX-Beginning (Japanese) which opened in 780 locations with some OK sales in LA, Boston, San Francisco, NYC and Chicago for what’s now looking like anestimated $898K 3-day.
Other than that in a very slow weekend, if audiences aren’t making their way to the cinema, perhaps they’ll find their way to their couches on Sunday night for the Oscars.
More…
- Captain America: Brave New World (Dis) 3,800 (-305) theaters, Fri $3.6M Sat $7M Sun $4.4M 3-day $15M (-47%)/Total $163.6M/Wk 3
- Last Breath (Foc) 3,018 theaters, Fri $3M Sat $2.95M Sun $1.8M 3-day $7.8M/Wk 1
- The Monkey (NEON) 3,227 (+27) theaters, Fri $1.8M, Sat $2.8M Sun $1.75M 3-day $6.37M (-55%)/Total $24.6M/Wk 2
- Paddington in Peru (Sony) 3,705 (-185) theaters, Fri $1M (-39%) Sat $2M Sun $1.4M 3-day $4.5M (-31%), Total $31.3M/Wk 3
- Dog Man (Uni) 3,055 (-124) theaters, Fri $870K Sat $2M Sun $1.3M, 3-day $4.2M (-28%), Total $84M/Wk 5
- Mufasa (Dis) 1,705 (-220) theaters, Fri $400K (-30%) Sat $925K Sun $575K 3-day $1.9M (-24%), Total $247.99M/Wk 11
- Ne Zha 2 (CMC) 600 (-185) theaters, Fri $380K Sat $760 Sun $570K 3-day $1.7M (-46%)/Total $17.8M/Wk 3
- Heart Eyes (Sony) 2,406 (-597) theaters, Fri $374K, Sat $595K Sun $356K 3-day $1.32M (-51%), Total $28.8M/Wk 4
- Unbreakable Boy (LG) 1,717 (+30) theaters, Fri $350K (-60%) Sat $550K Sun $300K 3-day $1.2M (-50%), Total $4.5M/Wk 2
- One of Them Days (Sony) Fri $250K Sat $423K Sun $252K 3-day $925K (-33%), Total $47.4M /Wk 7
- Riff Raff (RSA) Fri $312K Sat $368K Sun $221K 3-day $901,3K/Wk 1