Madame Web beaten by Bob Marley in box office battle

Madame Web endured a disastrous opening weekend, the superhero movie being dwarfed by Bob Marley biopic One Love at the box office and bringing in a record low for Sony.

It was a St Valentine’s Day massacre in U.S. cinemas this week. On February 14, the might of Marvel did battle with reggae icon Bob Marley, whose One Love biopic opened against Madame Web.

The Marley movie received middling reviews in advance of its release, while the Spidey spinoff was destroyed by the critics, and currently carries a Rotten Tomatoes score of just 13%.

And that translated into empty cinemas, with Madame Web opening to terrible numbers, which continued into the weekend.

Madame Web beaten by Bob Marley in box office battle

Madame Web made just $6.05 million at the US box office on opening day, from 4,013 screens. Bob Marley: One Love more than doubled that total, grossing $14 million, which is the best Valentine’s Day mid-week take ever.

Sony Pictures

That tracks with how we felt about the films. Dexerto gave Bob Marley: One Love 3/5, and wrote: “One Love is an entertaining biopic about a remarkable man; one which comes close to capturing Bob Marley’s essence. But that’s more to do with Kingsley Ben-Adir than the film’s sometimes clunky script. The actor hits all the right notes, capturing Bob’s passion, nobility, and revolutionary spirit, so you believe not only Marley’s musical genius, but also his ability to galvanize through a simple message of love. It’s a remarkable performance.”

While we gave Madame Web just 1/5, writing: “Despite fleeting moments of (unintentional) hilarity and the valiant efforts from much of the cast, Madame Web is yet another nail in the coffin of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe. It’s not the worst comic movie ever made, but it’s certainly helping to bring superhero fatigue to a climax. On the plus side, it’s an easy act for Venom 3 to follow.”

Madame Web’s opening box office hits record low

Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out much better for Madame Web across the rest of the weekend, and earned only $25.8 million across the six-day opening.

Not only is this one of the lowest openings for a comic book movie ever, but it now also knocks Morbius out of first place for the worst-performing movie in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe. (Morbius ended up taking $39 million over its opening weekend.)

Of course, this isn’t all that surprising. Across the weekend, the internet has been ablaze with Madame Web hate. Following the first wave of vicious critical reviews, audiences have now jumped on their chance to bash the newest Sony Spider-Verse flick online.

There’s still a ways to go until Madame Web’s overall box office impact can be fully compared to its theatrical counterparts, but for now, it doesn’t look like her web has spun out very far.