Weekend Box Office: The success of Croods 2 spares theaters from their worst weekend in months
Christopher Nolan may wish otherwise, but the U.S. box office has been an absolute disaster since theaters started hesitantly reopening back in the summer. His movie made a fair amount of money, but after months of screenings, Tenet’s total take is still just $7 million or so higher than the opening box office of Dunkirk—and it is by far the most successful movie to come out during the pandemic. Things were even more dire than usual this past weekend, though, to the point where the total gross of the top 10 movies was only $250,000 higher than the worst weekend we’ve seen since August (the weekend we described in this recurring feature as “Freaky bad”). The New Mutants made more money in its opening weekend than 10 movies combined made this past weekend. And it’s worth pointing out: This is not the fault of theaters, this is not the fault of Americans who are not going to theaters, and this is not the fault of studios delaying their movies or dumping them on streaming services. The people to blame for this are the people in the federal government who utterly botched their response to the pandemic, making it possible for things to get dramatically worse even into December.
