As we’d expect from one of the hottest sports moments of the year, the Super Bowl weekend traditionally sees a very sluggish domestic box office. With studios and distributors keen to see the momentum gained in 2024 carry forward into the 2025 box office landscape, what were the results from this key weekend on the calendar? Generally, quite positive, as entertainment lawyer Brandon Blake, of Blake & Wang P.A., is here to share.
Best Post-COVID Result
Was it a record-beater? No, as we would expect. However, this weekend’s box office will be one of the strongest overall results for this weekend since the pandemic disruptions. Dog Man turned in a solid performance, landing at $13.7M in takings over what was actually its second release weekend. We haven’t seen that since Death on the Nile in 2022, which only claimed $12.8M over the same weekend.
Ironically, 2022 is the weekend to beat overall, too, with $53.8M across all titles. While the results are still being calculated, this weekend looks to have turned in a healthy $54.4M.
Indies Perform Well
This weekend also saw two small-budget movies launch, Heart Eyes from Spyglass and Sony, and Love Hurts from Universal and 87North. While both turned in sub-$10M performances, as one can expect from smaller titles, those still represent a milestone recovery point for this critical slice of the box office pie, again building on 2024’s momentum.
Heart Eyes did particularly well, bringing in $8.5M, with Love Hurts netting a lukewarm $5.8M. Once again, this highlights how important diverse slates including lower-budget titles are for the overall health of the box office, even if they don’t turn in the splashy figures blockbusters can.
While Super Bowl weekend will never be anything to write home about at the box office, the fact that 2025 managed to deliver a very credible performance despite the lure of this iconic part of the sports calendar points to a far healthier and happier box office than we’ve seen in previous years. Let’s hope that momentum continues to build in the rest of the year.
Film and Television 