Pull up a chair, we’re waiting for Doctor Strange, and Other Box Office News.

Note: this article originally ran on Set the Tape (link).

Not sure if you’re aware of this, they’ve been keeping it on the down-low, but Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness comes out in around 48 hours.  People are a little excited for it.  As is customary whenever a big new Marvel movie is preparing to Godzilla itself all over the cinematic landscape, studios have pre-emptively battened down the hatches, locked themselves away in their bomb shelters, and are refusing to come out again until at least the end of May.  Therefore, this week’s Box Office Report looks much the same as last week’s since only one new film came out.  I probably could’ve gotten away with copy-pasting the entirety of that prior article here with only occasional grammatical and adjective changes without real issue.  Plus, it would’ve been funny to mess with you all by making you think your memories are shot to shit.

Just like that of Liam Neeson’s character in Memory (tortured Segway)!  Yes, the cottage industry of identikit Neeson action vehicles, the kind which require the only particular set of skills Neeson seems to have any interest in utilising anymore, continue unabated despite oversaturation and total audience disinterest!  The fifth such film since the plague times began, Memory stars Neeson as an assassin with a faltering memory but clearly audiences aren’t suffering from a similar affliction since they largely went “haven’t we already seen this one before?” and stayed well clear.  The first of these Neeson vehicles to come out in a pandemic world, Honest Thief, made $4.1 million in its mid-October 2020 opening weekend and was good enough to top the chart.  Memory, meanwhile, made $3.1 million and settled for a lowly eighth.  You hate to see it… though, statistically, nobody saw it so aren’t really able to hate it.

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Yeah, Full List already.  It’s a slow news week, whaddya want?

US Box Office Results: Friday 29th April 2022 – Sunday 1st May 2022

1] The Bad Guys

$16,100,000 / $44,444,400

Not even a full third of a drop between opening and sophomore!  That’s majorly impressive, even if that’s admittedly only possible because the film opened in the low $20 millions to begin with.  Might be a pretty clear indicator that animation investment is the way to go, since the family theatrical appetite is there?  Maybe also start not treating your animation workers like dogshit?

2] Sonic the Hedgehog 2

$11,350,000 / $160,925,510

I would like to rescind my comment from last week’s Sonic entry and instead ask if I can make this Jehtt video one of my top films of the year.  It’s got everything: suspense, intrigue, a surprise twist ending!

3] Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

$8,301,000 / $79,553,588

Taking bets on whether this’ll crawl its broken legs across the $100 mil domestic line or not.  Just don’t expect a high return on your stake whichever side of the divide you fall on.

4] The Northman

$6,310,000 / $22,806,350

Saw this for a second time last Monday, my heavily-pregnant friend tagging along.  Beforehand, she informed me that she would need to use the toilet at some point during the film since her body was now forcing her to go pretty much every hour on the hour… except that she made it through the whole thing without needing to go once!  Such is the awesome power of Eggers’ movie; it can stem the unstoppable tides of pregnant women!

(This is the most TMI/worst-in-general thing I have ever written for a BOR entry and I am so sorry.)

5] Everything Everywhere All at Once

$5,542,515 / $35,492,178

All of my London friends have now seen this movie, a fact I am not in the least bit jealous of and this involuntary eye-twitch which has developed in the last week is not at all related to.

6] The Lost City

$3,935,000 / $90,819,912

Yeah, books!  Amy Walker reads lots of them!  This week she’s been reading T. Kingfisher’s latest opus, Nettle and Bone!

7] The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

$3,925,000 / $13,504,358

Meanwhile, Lee Thacker’s had a butchers at the Studio Canal restoration of classic Ealing-reminiscent comedy The Wrong Arm of the Law.  Lets me remind you that ACAB.

8] Memory

$3,100,000 / NEW

One way to read this result is as a major disappointment, the “turn out the lights” moment on a dependable cinematic rock for the past near-decade-and-a-half.  However, I choose not to be such a downer.  After all, I grew sick of the mid-budget Liam Neeson action vehicle way back in mid-2015 and am legitimately surprised it took until they went full-Guitar Hero on the saturation front for general audiences to follow suit.  That’s real impressive longevity not to be sniffed at!  Doing the same thing fundamentally unchanging for 15 years without audiences getting tired of it.  If anything, that’s aspirational, and definitely has no parallels to this very feature which is coming close to a full decade of existence on the Internet in various forms!

9] Father Stu

$2,210,000 / $17,553,965

Video games!  The devil’s truest vice!  Shaun Dewhirst has traversed into the hell of Early Access to try out indie hack-and-slasher Ember Knights and sees something with real potential to breakout.

10] Morbius

$1,500,000 / $71,457,347

Reminder to all that the Doctor Strange socials embargo lifted on Tuesday morning and that spoilers will be running around rampantly everywhere from hereon out because nobody bothers to be nice anymore.  Mind you, I’d much rather be assailed by Doctor Strange spoilers on YouTube than ads for Piers Morgan’s new show, of which I have been forced to sit through dozens in the last two weeks despite doing absolutely nothing on there or elsewhere to deserve such a thing.  What is even the point of the algorithm if it’s going to hurt me like this?

Dropped out: Ambulance

Callie Petch went through their list of friends and found they had no-one to tell.