Box Office Is Finally Getting Some Help — But Still No Slump Busters

After three weeks of increasingly bad news for the box office, the arrival of Valentine’s Day and Presidents Day brings two new films — Paramount’s “Bob Marley: One Love” and Sony/Columbia’s “Madame Web” — that will finally freshen up the theatrical market and bring some sections of the audience back to theaters.

Still, even the combined efforts of these films won’t be enough to completely lift the box office out of its early-year slump. Theaters still need to wait for the arrival of “Dune: Part Two” and “Kung Fu Panda 4” to really get the theatrical market to a healthier state again.

With both “Marley” and “Madame Web” hitting theaters on Wednesday to take advantage of Valentine’s Day date night audiences, opening estimates for both films are being measured over six days from Wednesday to President’s Day Monday, instead of the usual three-day total from Friday-Sunday.

Industry estimates have “Bob Marley” leading the charts with a $30-35 million six-day start, with Paramount projecting an opening on the low end of that range. “Madame Web” is expected to open lower at $20-25 million, with Sony projecting a six-day opening of $22 million.

For “Bob Marley,” Paramount is expecting audiences over the age of 35 to primarily drive turnout. With a reported $70 million budget, the film will need to leg out with fans of the famous reggae musician over several weeks. But it has the advantage of strong international appeal, as Marley remains a global icon more than 40 years after his death. With enough turnout from key overseas markets in Latin America and Europe, the film could turn a modest theatrical profit.

The bad news for “Bob Marley” is that critics haven’t been very impressed. Early reviews gave the film a 42% Rotten Tomatoes score at time of writing. Devoted fans of the musician will still likely turn out on this holiday weekend, but the reviews will strike a blow to the film’s efforts to attract a wider audience over the coming weeks, especially once “Dune: Part Two” arrives at the beginning of March.

“Madame Web” will look to attract younger audiences that aren’t familiar with Bob Marley, hoping to bring them in with a film that Sony insiders say is more of a sci-fi thriller with comic book characters than a film that follows the narrative and visual tropes of a superhero film.

Sony’s efforts to turn Marvel characters it has the film rights to into franchises has been mixed. The studio scored success with the 2018 film “Venom,” which spawned a 2021 sequel and a third installment due out later this year. On the flip side, the Jared Leto film “Morbius” barely reached break-even territory, grossing $167 million worldwide against a reported $75 million budget.

With an $80 million budget, “Madame Web” faces an uphill road to do any better than “Morbius,” and will need to defy expectations and post strong reception scores, particularly among younger women, to have any hope of legging out against “Dune 2.” Unfortunately for Sony, critics have panned “Madame Web,” with early reviews yielding an 16% Rotten Tomatoes score.

The worst-case scenario is that neither of these new releases finds a foothold beyond their core audience. Even at their best, this Presidents’ Day weekend will be dwarfed not only by pre-pandemic years but also by the holiday results from 2022 and 2023, when the openings of films like “Uncharted” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” gave the box office bigger jolts and pushed four-day overall weekend totals above $100 million.

Between the projected launches for “Bob Marley” and “Madame Web” and the weak holdover returns for other films — “Argylle” needed only $6.5 million to top last weekend’s charts — it’s very likely that it will take the mid-week boost of Valentine’s Day moviegoers for the box office to make anywhere near what this holiday was able to yield in just four days in previous years.

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