‘Morbius’ Draws Box Office Blood With $39 Million Opening

thewrap.com:

While nowhere near the levels seen with Sony’s “Venom” films, “Morbius” was made on a considerably lower budget than Tom Hardy’s antihero romp with a reported $75 million budget.

The $39 million launch is just below independent projections of a $40 million range opening but above Sony’s much more conservative projections of $33 million, an opening posted by recent comic book movies “Birds of Prey” and “Dark Phoenix,” both of which had higher budgets than “Morbius.”But while “Morbius” is off to a solid start, the film’s reception scores have been mixed at best.

As critics drove a stake through it with a 17% Rotten Tomatoes score, audience metrics have been only somewhat better with a 69% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes going with a C+ on CinemaScore and just 47% recommend on Postrak.In the coming weeks, movie theaters will get a wide variety of new releases, starting with “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” and Michael Bay’s “Ambulance” next week with “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” and “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” coming later in the month.

While that’s good for theaters in need of diverse offerings to get more people to buy tickets again, it could combine with the poor word-of-mouth for “Morbius” to lead to a steep second weekend drop.