Box Office Report: On the Edge of Mickey 17

Boy, it really feels like Mickey 17 got screwed around by Warner Bros., right? The long-awaited follow-up to Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning masterpiece Parasite saw its release date shunted around the calendar several times. Part of that was related to post-strike shuffles, but the more it was rescheduled, the harder it became to escape the sense that Zaslav’s goons didn’t want to deal with it. That usually signals that the movie is bad or went through a disastrous production, but Mickey 17 was positively reviewed. Even now, it feels like they’re fudging their promotional campaign. Outside of Bong’s native South Korea, it seems as though the marketing has been very mild (surely they could have gotten Robert Pattinson out there kissing puppies and eating hot wings?). Did the studio just not know what to do with it?

Regardless, Mickey 17 still managed to open at the top of the box office with $19.1 million from 3,807 theatres. Granted, it didn’t have much competition, and that’s a very soft opening for a movie with a reported $118 million budget. Internationally, it’s brought in about $53 million so far. Respectable numbers for an original sci-fi movie, and frankly, $118 million is now a ‘low’ budget for something in this genre. But yeah, in an industry where anything that makes less than a billion is a ‘flop,’ let’s just be happy that Zaslav didn’t try to delete this one too.

Following the Oscar success of Anora, Neon pushed Sean Baker’s Best Picture/Director/Actress/Screenplay/Editing winner into 1,130 theatres and helped it earn an extra $1.86 million. A true indie movie success. This is why the Oscars matter. It can make or break films like this.

At number nine is Rule Breakers, a drama about Afghan girls fighting the system to receive an education. Distributed by Angel Studios, it grossed $1.59 million from 2,044 theatres. Right behind it is a very different movie, Night of the Zoopocalypse. This is an animated horror comedy based on a story by Clive Barker (yes, that Clive Barker) that features the voices of David Harbour and Scott Thompson. This one earned $1.06 million. And right behind that one is In the Lost Lands, an epic fantasy based on a George R.R. Martin story from the husband/wife team of Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich. It was no Resident Evil. It only earned about $1.04 million from 1,370 locations.

In limited release news: the biopic Queen of the Ring, about the pioneering wrestler Mildred Burke, earned $380,000 from 825 cinemas. The horror film The Rule of Jenny Pen, starring John Lithgow, made $263,000 from 878 theatres. Eephus, a sports film about the last game of an amateur New England baseball league before their stadium is demolished that stars the legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman, took in $21,080 from two places. The wonderful On Becoming a Guinea Fowl made $13,361 from four cinemas.

This coming week sees the release of Steven Soderbergh’s spy thriller Black Bag, the drama Opus starring Ayo Edebiri, and Jack Quaid’s face-punching action Novocaine.

You can check out the rest of the weekend box office numbers here.