Last Updated on March 31, 2025 by Ryan Scott
It was another no good, very bad weekend at the box office. What else is new? Save for a couple of outliers, most of 2025 has been pretty dire thus far. It’s effectively tumbleweeds out there at multiplexes all across the country, even when big movies audiences might seemingly, normally turn up for hit the big screen. Original stuff? That’s becoming an almost impossible sell, it seems. Case in point, two original horror movies dropped this weekend – and nobody seemed to notice.
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Both falling outside of the top ten at the domestic box office this past weekend, we had Bill Skarsgard’s new contained thriller Locked and director Flying Lotus’ twisted sci-fi flick Ash both arrive on a sizable number of screens. Unfortunately, either because the marketing was somewhat limited or because audiences who cared knew these were largely going to be streaming plays in the end, they both failed to drum up much business.
Locked, which boasts solid reviews and also stars Oscar-winner Anthony Hopkins, made just $964,000 on nearly 1,000 screens. As for Ash, which recently premiered at SXSW, it made just $716,777 on over 1,100 screens. That one stars Eiza Gonzalez and Aaron Paul. Locked, which hails from The Avenue Entertainment, was always going to be making its money on VOD. As for Ash, it’s headed to Shudder, so that was meant for streaming, really.
Even so, these companies are bothering to put original genre fare in cinemas and that matters. Nobody is expecting these movies to make bank but numbers like these are tough to swallow, both for the industry at large and those who wish to see more original fare on screens in the future. Alas, it seems to be the norm.
Unfortunately, this past weekend was unkind even to would-be juggernauts. Disney’s live-action Snow White opened to a disastrous $43 million domestically, a ruinous number for a movie with a production budget said to be north of $250 million. Plus, Robert De Niro’s The Alto Knights crashed with just $3.1 million. Plus, Marvel’s Captain America: Brave New World only just now crossed the $400 million mark globally after its sixth weekend. That’s a very low number for a big superhero movie. It’s not just horror that’s having a tough time, that’s for sure.
There are some bright spots, such as Oz Perkins’ The Monkey, which crossed the $60 million mark on its fifth weekend. But those are wins relative to expectations and because of small budgets. The industry at large can’t sustain on such things. Sure, the summer may bring greener pastures but theaters can’t keep surviving on bread crumbs for months at a time. It’s bleak out there, it pains me to say.
We’ll see where the chips fall next weekend when Blumhouse’s The Woman in the Yard and A24’s The Death of a Unicorn both arrive to hopefully give horror a much-needed win. MGM also has Jason Statham’s new action flick A Working Man due to arrive, with A Minecraft Movie kicking off April. The pressure is now on for that movie to deliver the goods because Warner Bros. needs it and theaters need it.
You can see the full list of the top ten movies at the box office for the weekend of March 21, 2025, below. For more, check out our look back at Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning for its 40th anniversary.
- Snow White – $43 million (first weekend)
- Black Bag – $4.4 million (second weekend)
- Captain America: Brave New World – $4.1 million (sixth weekend)
- Mickey 17 – $3.9 million (third weekend)
- Novocaine – $3.7 million – (second weekend)
- The Alto Knights – $3.1 million (first weekend)
- The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie – $1.8 million (second weekend)
- The Monkey – $1.54 million (fifth weekend)
- Dog Man – $1.5 million (eighth weekend)
- The Last Supper – $1.3 million (second weekend)
