Scream finally takes out Spider-Man at the weekend box office

Carefully place your superhero suit right on the edge of a trashcan, because it’s “Spider-Man no more!” at the box office. Yes, Spider-Man: No Way Home, the movie that single-handedly saved the movie theater industry and became Sony’s highest-performing film ever (despite the ongoing pandemic and the rise of a hot new variant that everybody got for Christmas), has fallen from the top spot on the domestic box office charts—a position it has held since release, five weeks ago.

It still made nearly $21 million (putting it just shy of a stunning $700 million domestic), which was enough for second place, but pole position went to the new Scream reboot instead with $30 million in its debut (which is also quite good). In one shot, that put Scream ahead of The King’s Man, a movie that probably regrets opening against Spider-Man, but it’s not like anyone could’ve predicted that that movie would do well.

King’s Man landed in fifth place, with Sing 2 and girlboss action movie The 355 falling to fourth in its second week. The new film from anime director Mamoru Hosoda, Belle, opened in sixth place with $1.6 million, which isn’t mind-blowing, but Belle did get a per-screen average of $1,241. That’s not bad, especially since anime movies don’t usually make a big theatrical impact in this country. (But word of mouth could end up being good for Belle, who knows.)

Further down the list we have American Underdog, West Side Story, Licorice Pizza, and The Matrix Resurrections. Both West Side Story and The Matrix have made more than $30 million, which is reasonable for movies that have been in pandemic theaters for a month, but they almost certainly won’t be making much more than that. By comparison, Licorice Pizza has only made $9.5 million after eight weeks, and while a lot of that is due to it never really getting a wide rollout, it’s still barely enough to cover the cost of all those Fat Bernie’s waterbeds or Bradley Cooper’s trashed Ferrari.

One other interesting thing on the box office charts is that Marvel’s Eternals somehow made $21,000 despite being available on Disney+. 85 theaters in America showed Eternals this weekend and a couple of people actually went to go see it, in the middle of a pandemic that will never end, rather than just loading up Disney+ and streaming it!

Anyway, the full list of this weekend’s box office numbers is available at Box Office Mojo, and the the top 10 list is available below.

• Scream
• Spider-Man: No Way Home
• Sing 2
• The 355
• The King’s Man
• Belle
• American Underdog
• West Side Story
• Licorice Pizza
• The Matrix Resurrections