The film 'Civil War,' a bleak American dystopian movie by Alex Garland, remained the top movie in theaters for the second week in a row, as estimated by the studio on Sunday.
The movie 'Civil War,' which had a big budget from the indie studio A24, earned $11.1 million from ticket sales over the weekend, playing in 3,929 theaters. The film, set in a near-future U.S. where Texas and California rebel against a fascist president, has made $44.9 million in two weeks.
The thought-provoking idea of the movie, along with A24's marketing that featured images of U.S. cities affected by war, helped keep 'Civil War' on the minds of moviegoers.
It was a very slow weekend at the theaters, which adds to worries about the current slow year for Hollywood at the box office. Ticket sales so far this year are nearly 20% lower compared to last year, according to Comscore.
Leading up to the weekend, Universal Pictures' 'Abigail,' a well-regarded R-rated horror film about Dracula's daughter, was expected to make the most money. It ended up in second place with $10.2 million from 3,384 theaters.
This was still a good result for a movie that only cost $28 million to make. 'Abigail' is a remake of the 1936 monster film 'Dracula's Daughter,' and it's about a 12-year-old girl taken by kidnappers who later realize they made a mistake. It's directed by the duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett under the production company Radio Silence.
More worrying was the generally lukewarm response to several new wide releases, and the likelihood that there will be similar weekends throughout 2024. The actors and writers' strikes from last year, which had a long-lasting effect on the movie schedule, made the gaps in Hollywood's release calendar even worse.
In recent years, horror films, which were usually very reliable in theaters, have not been doing as well as before. According to David A. Gross from Franchise Entertainment Research, horror releases earned $2 billion in worldwide sales in 2023.
Guy Ritchie's 'The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare' started with $9 million in 2,845 theaters. In this Lionsgate release based on a true story, which reportedly cost $60 million to produce, Henry Cavill leads a World War II mission off the coast of West Africa.
The Lionsgate spy comedy 'Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre' earned $48 million with a $50 million budget, while MGM's 'The Covenant,' also released last year, made $21 million with a $55 million production cost.
The most successful movie globally, however, remains 'Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.' The Warner Bros. monster film has been leading global ticket sales for the past month. It added another $9.5 million domestically and $21.6 million internationally, bringing its total global earnings to $485.2 million over four weeks.
