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The pre-summer semi-blockbuster season is well underway, with the past two weekends being the first time in 2022 we have had two $30+ million (or even two $20+ million) openings in a row. This weekend will keep the streak going and up the stakes as Sonic the Hedgehog 2 races into 4,232 theaters and is set to become one of the year’s top openers yet. Add to that next weekend’s release of Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, which begins its international rollout this weekend, and it is clear we are in the midst of the strongest slate of films since last October.

All comic-book characters are not created equal. At least when it comes to their drawing power at the box office. While Morbius, the latest big-screen origin story to spring from Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (think Venom but with vampire-bat DNA), did manage to open in the top spot over the weekend, its surprisingly soft $39 million debut hardly qualifies it is a blockbuster, no doubt leading to some nervous suits at the studio who had dreamed of creating a menagerie of secondary supervillains and ancillary anti-heroes to challenge Disney’s MCU—or at least become the Pepsi to its Coke. Originally slated for release back in July 2020 before the pandemic delayed its launch, the film which stars Jared Leto as Michael Morbius, a scientist who attempts to cure his own rare blood disease by injecting himself with vampire bat DNA only to see it turn him into a living vampire, was clobbered by critics (who tarred the $75-million title with a 17% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences (who gave it a woeful C+ CinemaScore grade). In its freshman weekend, the PG-13-rated title earned a $9,161 per-screen average at 4,268 locations. It fared only slightly better overseas, where it pulled in $44.9 million in its opening weekend, putting its cumulative worldwide box office at $84 million.

The month of March will finish with a total box office gross of around $575-$580 million, and more than half of that came from The Batman. That practically ties March with last July for the third best month since the beginning of the pandemic (after last October and December), but, beside the Dark Knight, it had little new content, save the late-in-the-month release (3/25) of the Channing Tatum\Sandra Bullock adventure/rom-com, The Lost City, to support it. Most of March's backup bucks came from February’s holdovers. While the month of April lacks a mega-release a la The Batman, it has what March did not, which is a steady supply of solid titles coming out pretty much every week. A few big franchise releases are in store, including new Harry Potter and Sonic the Hedgehog films, and first up is Morbius, the newest entry in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (or SSU).

Just when it seemed like the endless cycle of franchises and superheroes had eclipsed old-fashioned star power at the box office once and for all, Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum’s rom-com adventure The Lost City proved that there is still room for tried-and-true Hollywood A-listers at the multiplex (there’s even a Brad Pitt cameo). The Paramount crowd-pleaser—which appealed to many as a fizzy, modern-day riff on 1984’s Michael Douglas-Kathleen Turner classic, Romancing the Stone—racked up a better-than-predicted $31 million in its debut frame during Oscars weekend, finally toppling The Batman from the top spot after the Caped Crusader’s three-week reign.

The Batman crossed $300 million domestic on Sunday and $600 million worldwide earlier this week, and it will soon fly past the grosses of Batman v Superman ($330 million) and Joker ($335 million) to become the third highest grossing Batman film domestically behind The Dark Knight ($535 million) and The Dark Knight Rises ($448 million). The Robert Pattinson starring reboot doesn’t seem likely to pass TDKR, but ending up as the biggest non-Nolan Batman film is a nice feather in its cap, as is being the second biggest pandemic-era film. There has been little else going on at the box office this month, but after three weeks of total dominance, The Batman finally faces a formidable box office challenger this weekend.

Robert Pattinson’s The Batman continued to soar over both Gotham and the nation’s multiplexes for the third consecutive weekend, taking the No. 1 spot yet again with a muscular $36.8 million haul that pushed the latest outing from the Caped Crusader past the $300 million mark in North America. Meanwhile some fresh competition from the lower-profile worlds of anime and indie horror finally helped to nudge Sony’s blockbuster, Spider-Man: No Way Home, out of the top five for the first time in three and a half months.

The Batman has had the box office largely to itself in its first two weeks, and it will rule the roost again in its third week, likely to yet again be the only film to even cross $10 million. While the pitch black superhero reboot faces no competitors gunning for the top spot for another week, the rest of the top ten should be shaken up this weekend with a slew of small-ish newcomers entering into the arena. Horror audiences have multiple options with the wide releases X and Umma, and the limited releases The Outfit and Alice both have some buzz.

The Caped Crusader isn’t just cleaning up Gotham these days, he’s also cleaning up in cities from coast to coast as the Dark Knight’s latest big-screen outing, The Batman, easily held onto the top spot in its second weekend of release thanks to a lack of major new competition. Raking in $66 million in its sophomore frame, Warner Bros.’ bruise-black reboot featuring Robert Pattinson beneath the cowl continued to draw impressive audiences a week after the movie came out of the gate as the second-biggest North American debut of the pandemic era—behind only fellow comic-book crimefighter Peter Parker in Spider-Man: No Way Home.

After making over a quarter of a billion dollars worldwide in its first weekend, The Batman goes into weekend two ready to dominate once again. Pixar’s Turning Red was scheduled for a theatrical release on March 11, but as the Omicron variant was spreading in January it was decided that the film’s release would move to Disney+ (with a theatrical run at Disney’s El Capitan Theatre). Now there are no new films going wide in the aftermath of Warner’s latest reboot of its top grossing superhero franchise, giving the film a smooth glide above the rest of the titles for the next few weeks, and possibly for the entire month of March. 

That strange sound you may have heard over the weekend? Turns out it was all the sighs of relief coming from the Warner Bros. lot in Los Angeles. The studio scored a massive victory as the latest reboot of its beloved caped-crusader franchise, The Batman, bowed to a record-setting $128.5 million at the North American box office. Despite a three-hour running time, yet another new face underneath the cape and cowl, and a darker, moodier tone, the inaugural outing of Robert Pattinson’s haunted Gotham avenger instantly took its place as the first official blockbuster of 2022—not to mention the new runner-up to Spider-Man: No Way Home and its $260.1 million as the second-biggest domestic opening of the pandemic era.

2022 has gotten off to a mixed start at the box office, with only a few doubles and triples (Scream, Jackass Forever, and Uncharted) and nothing that has hit it out of the park. No new release this year has crossed $100 million at the box office (though Uncharted should hit that number in its third week), nor has there been a single weekend where the total box office of all films exceeded $100 million. Rather than the new titles, the major box office story of the year thus far is the continued exemplary performance of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which remains in the top three in its 11th week. This weekend, there is another superhero mega-franchise stepping into the ring, and the reboot of the Batman franchise should take the box office from a thawing winter to a blooming spring.

It is the quiet before the bat storm, and as we are one week out from the latest reboot of the Batman franchise, no big studio thought it wise to go wide with any of their titles. The top five is identical to last weekend, and the second weekend holdovers Uncharted and Dog both held on strong with less than 50% drops. The only fully wide new release was the Foo Fighters’ horror/comedy Studio 666 from Open Road, but with just $1.5 million it fell short of the top five, and the other notable newcomer, United Artists’ Cyrano, was right behind it with $1.4 million from 797 theaters.

Last weekend saw some solid over-performances from Uncharted and Dog in what was 2022’s best grossing weekend yet, coming in 32% ahead of the previous 2022 weekend best (Jan 14-17 when Scream opened and knocked Spider-Man: No Way Home from the top spot). Those two films will likely come in the top two slots again, ahead of what look like soft openings for this weekend’s newcomers Studio 666 and Cyrano. The lack of significant new content may lead to a box-office drop that makes this weekend the lowest grossing of February and one of the lowest of the year (though much depends on how well Uncharted holds), but not to fret – The Batman opens next weekend and could be one of the top grossers of the past few years.

It’s official: the winter belongs to Tom Holland, the rest of us are just living in it. A mere ten weeks after the blockbuster launch of Spider-Man: No Way Home, the 25-year-old British actor (or should we now say “star”?) returned to the top of the box-office chart with his second out-of-the-gate smash of the season—the Indiana Jones-esque videogame adaptation Uncharted, which debuted over President’s Day weekend to a projected $51 million after Monday is factored in. Meanwhile, just a notch below in second place, Channing Tatum’s feel-good man-and-his-best-friend road movie, Dog, sunk its canines into an $18 million opening holiday frame while the less-cuddly four-legged flick, The Cursed, barely managed to nose its way into the top ten with a $1.9 million bow.

On Monday, Spider-Man: No Way Home crawled its way past Avatar’s $760.5 million to become the third highest domestic grosser of all time. With that milestone reached, the baton is ready to be passed to Sony’s Uncharted, the long-awaited video game adaptation that also gives Tom Holland his biggest role yet outside of the MCU. The adventure film, which co-stars Mark Wahlberg, should spark things up at the box office after what has been a soft start to the year.

Super Bowl weekend tends to be a pretty pokey period at the multiplex each year as folks are too busy stocking up on chips and dips. But this year, things looked like they might be different. After all, three big, star-driven debuts were set to arrive in theaters on the eve of the Big Game. Sadly, for two of them, the box-office roll of the dice didn’t pay off, with only 20th Century Studios’ Agatha Christie murder-mystery Death on the Nile claiming anything like success as it wrested the top spot from Jackass Forever with $12.8 million in its freshman frame. Meanwhile, despite its Valentine’s Day timing, the Jennifer Lopez rom-com Marry Me bowed in third to a lukewarm $8 million and the latest Liam Neeson action-thriller, Blacklight, opened in fifth to a soft $3.6 million.

The first weekend of February had a solid rebound over the last two weekends of January, and this weekend should keep the trend going with the releases of Death on the Nile, Marry Me, and Blacklight. It is a busier than usual Super Bowl weekend which is typically quiet at the box office, often with no major new releases and massive Sunday drops. In an unusual twist, Valentine’s Day is falling one day after Super Bowl Sunday, so the studios are going for a field goal, if not a touchdown, and a strong Monday for the couple-friendly films could make up for the game day losses.

Jackass, which began its life as a men-behaving-dumbly series on MTV back in 2000 has gone on to spawn four feature films (five if you include the 2013 spin-off Bad Grandpa). The movies—a collection of masochistic pranks, self-inflicted humiliations, and male camaraderie—have always been solid performers at the box office, especially in light of their modest budgets. Jackass Forever will be no exception. The film, which cost a bargain-basement $10 million to produce (and watching it you may wonder where even that much money went), is already solidly in the black after its opening weekend thanks to pandemic-weary audiences in need of a stupid laugh (Paramount had projected that it would open in the mid-teens). The R-rated comedy’s $23.5 million opening weekend came from 3,604 theaters, where it earned a $6,250 per-screen average. It’s not particularly shocking that the franchise’s fanbase ate it up with a spoon and gave it a ‘B+’ grade from CinemaScore, but what is surprising is that critics were so fulsome in their praise for the low-brow film, anointing it with an 85% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Score one for Knoxville and his deathwish posse of dim bulbs.

After a sleepy January mostly dominated by Spider-Man: No Way Home taking victory laps after its explosive December opening, February looks to be considerably more eventful. The star-powered slate includes a franchise follow-up (Death on the Nile) and a potential franchise starter (Uncharted) mixed in with a musical rom-com (Marry Me) and a comedy (Dog) to round things out, not to mention a potential boost to the specialty market once the Oscar nominations come out. The month should get off to a solid start this weekend with the latest Roland Emmerich disaster epic Moonfall and the return of the Jackass gang in Jackass Forever.

It turned out to be déjà vu all over again at the box office as Sony’s competition-killer, Spider-Man: No Way Home, just kept cruising along as the number one movie in North America with an $11 million haul in its seventh weekend in theaters. With no major new releases during an otherwise sleepy January frame marked by white-out blizzard conditions in the northeast, the top five spots on the domestic front remained unchanged. Meanwhile, overseas, Peter Parker and company soared past the $1 billion mark—and that’s without even playing in the world’s biggest moviegoing market, China.