The Bad Guys makes a surprise run for the crown at the weekend box office

The Fantastic Beasts and Sonic sequels have both fallen pretty hard

By Sam Barsanti  |  April 24, 2022 | 8:38pm
Aux News The Bad Guys
The Bad Guys makes a surprise run for the crown at the weekend box office
The Bad Guys Image: DreamWorks Animation LLC

Raise your hand if you saw this coming: Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets Of Dumbledore has fallen hard in its second week at the box officn, down more than 66 percent to only $14 million and third place on the charts. That’s a million dollars less than what Sonic The Hedgehog 2 made in its third week, with the video game adaptation’s total sitting some $80 million higher than Fantastic Beasts. But they both fell short of a surprise contender this week, a movie that seemed like it would’ve been destined to “oh yeahhh, whatever happened with that?” status a couple of weeks from now: The Bad Guys, the new DreamWorks animated film that is apparently… pretty okay.

The Bad Guys made $24 million this week, which isn’t a ton, but it was enough to take the top spot from seemingly higher-profile releases. Speaking of, Robert Eggers’ The Norman came ashore in fourth place with a $12 million debut, followed by The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent in fifth with $7 million in its debut. After those two is Everything Everywhere All At Once, which—despite our predictions in previous write-ups—seems to have tapered off at a total of $26 million after a gradual box office rollout over the course of a month or so (it’s still playing in half the theaters as The Bad Guys, but its pre-screen average is nothing to write home about).

The Lost City made $4 million for a total of $85 million, giving us a chance to point out that a quarter of the movies on the charts for this weekend have “The” at the front of the title. Is that a lot? Is that a little? This is the first time we’ve thought to track that, and with The Batman now on HBO Max and home video, it seems like that number is just going to go down, but… we have to write this thing every week, and there’s only so much to say.

Ninth place went to Morbius and 10th went to Ambulance, proving that both superhero movies and original standalone action movies are both box office poison and that no superhero movie or original standalone action movie will ever make money again. You know what that means, Hollywood: Back to Westerns and musicals! Maybe a remake of the train coming at the camera!

The full top 10 is below, including the one with Mel Gibson, courtesy of Box Office Mojo.

  • The Bad Guys
  • Sonic The Hedgehog 2
  • Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets Of Dumbledore
  • The Northman
  • The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent
  • Everything Everywhere All At Once
  • The Lost City
  • Father Stu
  • Morbius
  • Ambulance

 
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