‘Mickey 17’ Faces Tall Order at Box Office After $19 Million Opening Weekend

Warner Bros.’ “Mickey 17” doesn’t look like it will blast off at the box office, earning an opening weekend of $19.1 million from 3,807 locations as it faces a long road to recouping its nine-digit production budget.

Greenlit in January 2022 under previous Warner film chairman Toby Emmerich, “Mickey 17” is acclaimed director Bong Joon-ho’s follow-up to his Best Picture Oscar winner “Parasite” and carries a reported production budget of $118 million.

Reception for the film has been generally positive with Rotten Tomatoes scores of 79% critics and 73% audience to go with a B on CinemaScore. But that good-but-not-great word of mouth may not be enough to give “Mickey 17” the legs to be theatrically profitable, especially with Paramount’s “Novocaine” being released next week with a relatively more accessible form of the gory action thrills that “Mickey 17” offers along with Bong’s brand of biting satire.

“Mickey 17” is the only film to gross more than $10 million this weekend, with overall grosses reaching an industry estimated $57.7 million. That’s 59% down from $137 million a year ago, when “Dune: Part Two” was opening to $82.5 million. The upcoming spring is expected to be similarly slow, as theaters are looking to summer to fulfill the promise of a box office rebound in 2025.

Taking second this weekend is Marvel Studios’ “Captain America: Brave New World,” which is taking advantage of the lack of four-quadrant competition with $8.5 million in its fourth weekend.

With a domestic total of $175 million, the film is headed for a final box office total in the neighborhood of the $214.5 million domestic/$476 million global total of “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.” Not a strong result, but better than the initially bleaker outlook the film had after its 68% second weekend drop.

Focus Features’ “Last Breath” is in third with $4.2 million in its second weekend for a $14.6 million running total against a $5 million acquisition buy. Neon’s “The Monkey” is in fourth with $3.9 million in its third weekend for a $31 million total, passing “I, Tonya” to become Neon’s third highest grossing domestic release before inflation.

Sony’s “Paddington in Peru” completes the top 5 with $3.7 million and a $36.8 million domestic total after four weekends, just beating out the $3.5 million sixth weekend of Universal/DreamWorks’ “Dog Man,” which has an $88.7 million domestic total.

In seventh on the charts is the newest Best Picture Oscar winner, “Anora,” which Neon brought back to more than 1,100 theaters for a screen count of 1,938 locations. The film earned $1.85 million this weekend and now has an $18.3 million total, enough to pass the unadjusted domestic total of 2009 Best Picture winner “The Hurt Locker,” which still stands as the lowest grossing winner of the 21st century outside of the pandemic.

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