Box Office: ‘Clayface’ Is Latest Example of Superhero Indifference

[#item_full_content] [[{“value”:”With the caveat that Spider-Man: Brand New Day just became the biggest-grossing movie of all time in North America while Avengers: Endgame just reclaimed its global box office crown, there needs to be a real conversation as to how much leeway we’re expected to offer to the current wave of Marvel or DC comic book flicks. Clayface just topped the box office with a $24 million opening weekend, which is good enough for a lower-budget horror flick centered upon a C-list Batman villain. However, A) it is underwhelming overseas for what’s thus far a $43 million global cume, and B) its raw domestic debut grosses are, at best, okay by most comparative measures.
It’s the second-lowest opening for a live-action name-brand DC Comics movie (so, no, not Red or The Losers) in the post-Avengers era. It opened below the $25-$32 million likes of Blue Beetle, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, and Shazam: Fury of the Gods, and above only Wonder Woman 1984. WW84 opened with $16.4 million in 2,100 theaters in pre-vaccine December 2020 despite concurrent HBO Max availability. Among the various villain-focused Marvel/DC flicks of this kind, it opened well below Morbius ($39 million in 2022), on par with Madame Web ($25 million in 2024) and sold fewer opening-weekend tickets than Halle Berry’s Catwoman ($16.7 million in 2004, or around $30 million adjusted for inflation).
Its reported $40 million budget is well below the norm for modern comic book movies but comparatively high for a horror title. Among original (or even non-sequel) R-rated chillers, the face-melting melodrama opened below Universal’s recent Other Mommy and Warner Bros.’ early-2019 not-quite-Conjuring spin-off The Curse of La Llorona and (sans inflation) barely above the over/under $23 million debuts for Neon’s Longlegs, Universal’s The Black Phone and Paramount’s Smile. And that’s with strong reviews, a great-for-horror A- CinemaScore grade and (after Other Mommy collapsed) an opening as the go-to scary movie for Halloween. Fair or not, it feels like another “Is this your king?!” moment for Marvel and/or (especially) DC movies.
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