The Jack Quaid-led action comedy “Novocaine” will vie with last weekend’s champion “Mickey 17” for the top spot on box office charts.
Based on projections, “Novocaine” should lead the way with $10 million to $12 million from 3,300 North American theaters in its first weekend of release. The film, from Paramount Pictures, cost $18 million. In “Novocaine,” Quaid plays an introverted everyman with the inability to feel pain, which he uses to his advantage after his dream girl is taken hostage in a bank robbery.
Those ticket sales should be enough to topple “Mickey 17,” which is expected to decline by 55% to 60% from its $19 million debut, putting second-weekend revenues around $8 million to $9 million. So far, the dystopian sci-fi comedy from Bong Joon Ho and Robert Pattinson has generated $20.5 million domestically and $54 million globally. Those grosses aren’t bad for an original film in this theatrical landscape — except that “Mickey 17” cost $118 million to produce and requires around $275 million to $300 million worldwide to get into the black during its big screen run, according to rival executives with knowledge of similar productions.
This weekend’s other new releases — Steven Soderbergh’s sleek, R-rated thriller “Black Bag” and Ayo Edebiri and John Malkovich’s surrealist satire “Opus” — aren’t expected to pack a punch with single-digit starts. “Black Bag” is aiming for $7 million to $8 million from 2,705 venues while “Opus” will settle for $2 million to $4 million from 1,300 cinemas.
Meanwhile, Disney’s Marvel sequel “Captain America: Brave New World” is projected to add around $5 million in its fifth weekend on the big screen. The superhero adventure, starring Anthony Mackie, has earned $177 million domestically and $370.8 million worldwide, which is enough to rank as the biggest Hollywood release of the year but isn’t nearly enough to offset its massive $180 million price tag.
At this rate, “Captain America: Brave New World” will wind up as one of the lowest-grossing Marvel movies of all time — above the flat-out disasters of 2023’s “The Marvels” ($207 million) and 2011’s “The Incredible Hulk” ($264 million) but in the realm of disappointments like 2021’s “Eternals” ($402 million) and 2023’s “Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” ($476 million). Marvel has two more movies, “Thunderbolts” on May 2 and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” on July 25, on the calendar in 2025.
“Black Bag” is the latest feature from Soderbergh, the genre-spanning director of “Ocean’s Eleven,” “Erin Brockovich” and “Magic Mike.” Focus Features spent roughly $50 million on the film. Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender star as a married couple who work as intelligence agents. When a wife is suspected of betraying the nation, her husband’s loyalty — to his marriage or country — is put to the test. Critics have embraced the film, which runs at a brisk 94 minutes and boasts a 91% Rotten Tomatoes average. Variety’s chief film critic Peter Debruge referred to “Black Bag” as “one of [Soderbergh’s] smartest and sexiest films yet.”
Unlike the other two newcomers, A24’s low-budget “Opus” doesn’t have the benefit of critical support. The film is entering theaters with a 39% “rotten” average on Rotten Tomatoes. However, it cost under $10 million to produce so “Opus” doesn’t have too high a threshold for profitability. Edebiri, of “The Bear” and “Bottoms” fame, plays a young writer who travels to the remote compound of a legendary pop star (Malkovich) who mysteriously disappeared 30 years ago. Variety‘s Tomris Laffly wasn’t impressed, writing that “even Ayo Edebiri and John Malkovich can’t save A24’s exceedingly silly horror send-up of fandom.”
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