‘Morbius’ Tops Weekend Box Office Despite Dreadful Reviews
In spite of dreadful reviews from film critics, Jared Leto's 'Morbius' tops this weekend's box office, earning $39M – but it's not nearly enough for Sony execs to be optimistic.
The studio must be happy just to finally release 'Morbius ', but its numbers are rather low for Marvel-related project. The $39 million during opening weekend is even lower than Nicolas Cage's 'Ghost Rider' ($45.3 million) in 2007, and that one was released years before MCU. And though 'Morbius' numbers are a little higher than the ones of 'Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse' ($35.3 million), there is no hope that it will reach $190 million. Ben Affleck 's 'Daredevil ' just barely got over the $100 million mark with a $ 40.3 million opening weekend in 2003. But even then 'Morbius', which budget is obviously much bigger than $100 million, is going to be a financial disaster – not the first one for Sony and probably, at this rate, not the last one either.
Probably the matter is that most critics are just tired of comic movie adaptations, but there are not so many MCU films that have low ratings. The most recent examples include 'Eternals' with 48% at Rotten Tomatoes and 'Thor: The Dark World' that has 66%. Interestingly enough, 'Morbius', that has 17% of critic approval, is not the critics' most hated Marvel movie. 2015's 'Fantastic Four ' has only 9%, 'Elektra – 10% and 'Howard the Duck – 14%.