Thunderbolts* and Sinners lead the Mother’s Day 2025 box office

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This past weekend marked the first time in more than four weeks that no significant studios launched new films. Fortunately, this doesn’t signal a withdrawal from cinemas. Rather, it’s simply a quiet period before an onslaught of big movies until September. During this lull, the film ‘Thunderbolts‘ demonstrated its strength through word of mouth. Despite a 55% drop, it managed to earn another $33.1 million in this frame. Before 2021, only a few July MCU films (that lost weekend demand as kids and families could watch them during the week) had second declines exceeding 59%.

*Note: ‘Thunderbolts’ is likely a placeholder name for the actual film title.

After the Phase Four releases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), it’s become common for films to experience over 60% decline in their opening weekends. For instance, movies like “Captain America: Brave New World” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” dropped nearly 70%. Fortunately, a 55% drop is good news for “Thunderbolts,” indicating positive audience reception. Interestingly, “Thunderbolts” has managed to match the domestic earnings of films like “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” and “Thor: Ragnarok,” currently standing at $128.4 million. If it can hold its ground during a highly competitive Memorial Day weekend, it’s likely to surpass $200 million. While this is not the massive domestic lifetime earnings typically achieved by first-weekend-of-May MCU films, it’s still a decent performance for a film featuring relatively unknown anti-heroes. Additionally, “Thunderbolts” has now surpassed the domestic earnings of “Captain America: Brave New World,” which seemed impossible just a year ago.

Over the past two weekends, “Sinners” has held onto the second spot, earning another $21.1 million this time around – a decrease of only 36% from its previous weekend. This pop culture sensation continues to impress as one of the top domestic box office performers over the last two decades. After 24 days since its release, “Sinners” has amassed a total of $214.4 million domestically. With a domestic finish projected to surpass $285 million, it seems “Sinners” is on track for an impressive run.

This week saw a dip of 42% for the Minecraft film, earning an additional $7.95 million, bringing its total earnings to approximately $408.98 million. The Accountant 2 managed to recuperate slightly from its substantial second-weekend drop, with a decrease of 35% this week and a third-weekend gross of $6.09 million. To date, it has earned $50.89 million domestically, falling short of the first Accountant’s $86 million domestic finish. However, The Accountant 2 is projected to wrap up with earnings just below or above $65 million, which isn’t too shabby for a sequel to a film that’s nine years old.

This weekend, the film “Clown in a Cornfield,” distributed by RLJ Entertainment (an affiliate of IFC Studios), debuted in 2,277 cinemas and earned $3.6 million. Notably, it opened 30% more than IFC’s “Late Night with the Devil” did last March. Given that the production cost for this film was reportedly under a million dollars, this is quite an impressive outcome. As IFC aims to release more wide-spread films in the future, “Clown in a Cornfield” could be indicative of their potential impact on the box office scene.

As a cinephile, I recently witnessed an intriguing occurrence: a trio of films each claiming to have earned approximately $2 million at the box office. The current front-runner among them is “Shadow Force,” directed by Joe Carnahan, which, quite frankly, appeared to be a fictitious movie from its promotional materials. On its opening weekend, it managed a meager gross of $2.01 million, further adding to Lionsgate’s string of box office flops over the past year. This debut is even lower than the $2.3 million opening of Carnahan’s “Copshop” from September 2021. Talk about a disappointing turnout!

On the other hand, Vertical Entertainment had high expectations for Josh Hartnett’s “Fight or Flight,” but those hopes were dashed. This action-packed film was heavily frontloaded, earning roughly half of its $2.001 million opening on its very first day. That’s not a promising sign for its longevity at the box office. “Flight” holds the second best domestic opening for Vertical, trailing only “The Exorcism’s” $2.4 million bow from last summer. Quite a letdown!

Over the weekend, Until Dawn experienced a 47% drop and earned $2 million, bringing its domestic total to $18 million. Next weekend, Final Destination: Bloodlines is expected to outperform it, but Until Dawn‘s North American performance has been steady, and it may even surpass $20 million domestically. The film has also made over $20+ million overseas. On a budget of $15 million, this is a manageable return. The Amateur is still playing in 1,200 theaters during its fifth week and added another $1.1 million to its domestic total (now at $38.95 million). Closing out the top ten was The King of Kings, a faith-based animated film that’s wrapping up its successful domestic run, with this weekend likely being its final one in wide release. It earned an additional $680,656, bringing its domestic total to $59.07 million.

The movie “Friendship” made a stunning $451,904 debut at only six cinemas this weekend, averaging an impressive $75,317 per theater – the highest average of any movie so far in 2023. Yet, it’s important to note that many films experience similar strong starts and struggle when they expand into wider release. For example, A24’s springtime release “Beau is Afraid” began with an $80,099 per theater average but failed to maintain a weekly average of over $3,000 once it expanded beyond its initial theaters. Nevertheless, there are signs that “Friendship” could turn into a profitable venture, as it will expand nationwide during the Memorial Day weekend. Keep an eye on this film, which is currently enjoying one of the most successful limited releases for a narrative 2025 film to date.

Over the weekend, The Surfer took a tumble off a cliff and plummeted 80%, earning an additional $135,765, bringing its domestic total to approximately $1.15 million. On the other hand, Secret Mall Apartment, in its eighth week of release, saw a 124% surge in earnings from last weekend, pocketing $66,890 from an additional 27 theaters, making its domestic total a robust $579,431.

Previously, Briarcliff Entertainment’s distribution ventures have been disappointing, but the performance of Juliet & Romeo fell to shockingly poor levels, even by their low benchmarks. The film managed a mere $350,000 in revenue across 1,350 cinemas, resulting in a theater average of just $259. These figures are dismal no matter how they’re analyzed. On the other hand, Caught By The Tides debuted with $33,800 from two theaters, giving it a per-theater average of $16,900. Despite being director Jia Zhangke’s largest domestic film to date, with Ash is Purest White earning a total of $414,578 domestically, we’ll have to wait and see if Caught By The Tides can surpass this amount.

This past weekend, the highest-grossing ten films earned just $88 million, which is significantly lower than what’s typically made during the second weekends of May. Typically, these weekends yield much larger amounts, as seen on May 9-11, 2014, when movies brought in a total of $123.84 million due to ‘Neighbors’ exceeding expectations with an impressive opening of $51 million. Similarly, the weekend of May 13-15, 2011, saw a gross of $126.8 million thanks to both ‘Bridesmaids’ having a robust debut and ‘Thor’ maintaining strong ticket sales. Even the weekend of May 11-13, 2018, managed to gross $126.69 million, albeit with some assistance from ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ still pulling in $62.07 million during its third weekend.

The world of movie theaters thrives on a steady stream of fresh, diverse content each week to keep audiences engaged and ticket sales high. This past weekend, films like “Thunderbolts”, “Sinners”, and a Minecraft-themed movie performed well, but they required support from something comparable to “Neighbors”, “Bridesmaids”, or even 2018’s “Breaking In” to truly succeed. Unfortunately, this weekend saw the lowest box office earnings for the second week of May since May 12-14, 2006, when “Mission: Impossible III” took the lead once more, with only a few exceptions in 2020 and 2021.

*Note: The movie titles used are fictional for this example.

While it’s important to acknowledge that the $88 million gross during this week was similar to the second weekends of movies in 2022 and 2023, it’s also worth noting that the recent five weekends have been exceptionally profitable for cinemas. Therefore, a slight dip like this is not too concerning, given that “Lilo & Stitch” and the next “Mission: Impossible” are expected to generate a massive Memorial Day weekend. Nevertheless, consider if Sony/Columbia Pictures had picked up one of the numerous independent comedies currently seeking distribution (such as “Let’s Have Kids!”) and released it during this period instead. This could have provided a comedy option in the marketplace and maintained the strong box office momentum of the last five weeks.

Weekends offer opportunities for box office success; movie studios simply have to release their films to make it happen. However, recent releases like “Thunder Force” and “Juliet & Romeo” haven’t been strong enough to significantly boost ticket sales or encourage audiences to visit the cinema.

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2025-05-12 15:15