There was nothing particularly "Super" about Super Bowl 2019 weekend. Lowest game scores ever. Lowest box office in almost 20 years.
Womp womp.
Ticket sales at the domestic box office were only around $68 million to $70 million. That's the worst for a Super Bowl weekend in 19 years, THR reports, and also among the top 20 slowest weekends for any time since 1997.
It's like we've all turned into the sloths in Zootopia.
As we noted in our weekend box office roundup, Glass took the top spot for the third week in a row. Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan thanked fans for supporting his film, but this past weekend's $9.5 million take wasn't much to brag about. Newcomers to the screen -- like Miss Bala -- did even worse.
According to Box Office Mojo, the top 12 only made a combined $55.4 million. Combined! As they noted, that was the worst showing for the top 12 films since the first weekend in September 2017.
At least the weekend gave Glass the ego boost of being No. 1 again, and it also looked good for The Upside to take second place, with Miss Bala behind it, and then good ol' Aquaman adding to its billion-plus-total, with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse at No. 5. Green Book seems to be riding a high of Oscar nominations, and maybe the controversies added some curiosity too, since it took No. 6, ahead of The Kid Who Would Be King at No. 7.
The A-list team behind Serenity was upset at the lack of promotion for that film, and in Week 2 it only ranked No. 14, adding $1.7 million for a current total of $7.5 million. That gave it the truly appalling per-screen average of $664. Contrast that with Miss Bala, which had a disappointing opening, but actually played in fewer theaters than Serenity, and its $6.7 million opening at least gave it a $3,041 per-screen average.
So Super Bowl weekend wasn't a great time in the U.S., at least at the box office. Why not? Weather, maybe. But mostly, no real competition. The year is about to get packed with films, and a few of them are probably going to wish they had taken advantage of this quiet weekend to try and make their own mark.
This coming February 8-10 weekend is a whole other ball of box office wax, and things are only going to pick up from there. Glass is definitely retiring as the king of the box office -- going out with a whimper, not a bang -- with The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, Cold Pursuit, The Prodigy, and What Men Want on the way.
Check out our predictions for how those films will do, at least with critics, and bookmark our 2019 movie schedule for details on all the great movies ahead. The year may be having a sloooowwwww start, but it's going to pick up FAST when the superheroes swoop in, very soon.
