The 10 Biggest Comic Book Movie Second Weekend Drops In History

The most successful superhero and comic book movies reach their box office heights by not just being one-weekend wonders. Tentpoles like “The Dark Knight,” “Black Panther,” or the two “Spider-Verse” titles, just to name a few examples, stick around for months and months in theaters. Even audiences who aren’t normally interested in superhero fare come out to see these motion pictures, while die-hard fans tend to revisit them again and again. Great legs at the box office are critical to conjuring up a superhero movie moneymaker. 

Without strong retention, these films just don’t reach their full financial potential. Just ask the superhero movies with the biggest second weekend drops ever at the domestic box office. None of these titles made a massive impact in their lifetime theatrical runs, and that was largely because they had no momentum beyond their opening frames. Sometimes, dismal word-of-mouth ensured that these projects lost 70% or more in their second weekends of North American play. Other times, while well-reviewed by audiences and critics, external factors like competition from rival movies led to an unexpectedly steep decline in attendance for these films.

Whatever inspired the drops, these superhero movie flops had incredibly front-loaded box office performances that proved one weekend of revenue isn’t enough to make a hit. These features needed to stick around long-term to secure profitability. Instead, they ended up with the ignominious financial reputation of being among the 10 superhero movies with the biggest second weekend box office plunges.

In one of the more puzzling release date strategies ever, Universal opted to drop “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” one week before the arrival of “The Dark Knight.” Before it opened, nobody could have imagined that Christopher Nolan’s second Bat-movie would shatter so many box office records, but even months in advance, it was clear that “The Dark Knight” was poised for success. Reasonably, it would make sense to give “The Golden Army” some breathing room rather than have it contend with Batman after just seven days in theaters. 

This weird scheduling movie capsized an initially promising theatrical run for “The Golden Army,” which kicked off with $34.5 million on opening weekend. In its second frame, however, all eyes turned to “The Dark Knight” and fellow Universal title “Mamma Mia!” With that, “The Golden Army” plummeted 70.7% to gross just $10.1 million in its second frame. One weekend earlier, “The Golden Army” had been the No. 1 movie in America. A week later, it was the fifth biggest title in the marketplace. Adding insult to injury, fellow superhero movie holdover “Hancock” dropped only 56% in the same frame. 

This was the ultimate sign of how this “Hellboy” installment had been especially impacted by “The Dark Knight” among summer 2008 holdovers. That questionable release date meant any positive audience word-of-mouth surrounding “The Golden Army” never had a chance to take root. It was a baffling decision that resulted in one of the worst summer blockbuster second weekend holds up to that point.

After debuting to a disastrous $26.2 million in its domestic opening weekend, “The Suicide Squad” failed to save any face once it collapsed 71.5% in its second frame. Even the first, reviled “Suicide Squad” had a better second weekend hold of 67%, even after opening to over $133 million, and could afford a sizable decline. James Gunn’s exceedingly expensive reboot of this R-rated property very much could not. Grossing just $7.47 million in that second frame, “The Suicide Squad” eventually earned only $55.8 million in North America, a calamitous haul on all fronts.

If there was any cold comfort for “The Suicide Squad,” it’s that it was far from alone in having a gargantuan second-weekend drop. This DC Comics adaptation was, like all other 2021 Warner Bros. movies, simultaneously sent to HBO Max the day it opened in movie theaters. The vast majority of these features, like “Mortal Kombat” or “Space Jam: A New Legacy,” plummeted 69% or more in their respective second frames. Unless they were big PG-13 blockbusters like “Dune” or “Godzilla vs. Kong,” the majority of Warner Bros.’ 2021 offerings had steep declines since people could just watch them for free with an HBO Max subscription.

In other words, the fall of “The Suicide Squad” wasn’t necessarily because general audiences hated this film, but rather due to the front-loaded nature of movies that hit theaters and streaming at the same time — losing countless millions for “The Suicide Squad” in the process.

The “X-Men” movies were often front-loaded performers: “X-Men: The Last Stand” plummeted 69% in its second frame, for example, while even the well-received “X-Men: Days of Future Past” fell 64%. None of them, though, had as harsh a decline as “Dark Phoenix.” After opening to a cataclysmically bad $32.8 million, director Simon Kinberg’s film lost 71.5%, grossing just an additional $9.35 million the next weekend. Worse, this second frame fell over the 2019 Father’s Day weekend, a holiday that, in theory, could have given “Dark Phoenix” a minor box office boost. Instead, the word-of-mouth was so toxic that audiences stayed far away.

The disastrous box office plummet of “Dark Phoenix” was a byproduct of some external problems that nobody involved in the movie could control. Specifically, the Disney/Fox merger closed in March 2019, allegedly leading to the marketing campaign of “Dark Phoenix” and other Fox movies going nowhere. However, the biggest problem here was simply the movie itself. Greeted with terrible reviews, audiences bestowed this project with a B- moniker, the worst CinemaScore grade ever for an “X-Men” title. Plus the film’s direct predecessor, 2016’s “X-Men: Apocalypse,” didn’t inspire enthusiasm from audiences for more mutant adventures.

Even with a gigantic marketing campaign and no Disney/Fox merger to complicate things, nothing could have made “Dark Phoenix” a hit or prevented that eye-popping second weekend plunge. Infamous series entry “The Last Stand” had better box office retention than this infamous flop.

In a pre-2000 world, when home video releases occurred months or even a whole year after a movie’s debut, theatrical releases typically had significantly better second weekend holds than they do now. The divisive “Batman Forever,” for instance, dropped 44% in its second frame, a better hold than all but one Marvel Cinematic Universe entry. If you had a steep second weekend decline in the 1990s, then something must have really gone wrong. So it was with 1996’s “The Crow: City of Angels,” a follow-up to 1994’s “The Crow” with Vincent Pérez now in the lead role. In another change of pace from its predecessor, the box office results were way worse.

Opening over Labor Day weekend 1996, “City of Angels” had an okay $9.8 million three-day bow before collapsing 72.1% in its second frame to gross another $2.7 million. Critics weren’t the only ones put off by this sequel. Audiences who showed up over opening weekend didn’t feel like they got anything close to their money’s worth, with word of mouth sending “City of Angels” spiraling in its second frame. In its total North American run, “City of Angels” only grossed a paltry $17.9 million.

Miramax opted to send the next two “Crow” installments straight to the home video market rather than movie theaters. After the disastrous run of “City of Angels,” this franchise was tainted as a theatrical property. 

Movies opening in December tend to leg out like crazy at the box office. Thanks to the deluge of end-of-year holidays in this month, December is the time where “Anyone But You” can open to $6 million yet make $88.3 million in its total domestic run. But not all December newcomers experience the box office stamina of “The Greatest Showman” or “Miss Congeniality.” Just look at “Kraven the Hunter,” which dropped into multiplexes over the second weekend of December 2024. 

The final film in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, “Kraven the Hunter” was already off to a disastrous start with an $11 million bow. In its second frame, despite having no new competition in the R-rated action film space, it collapsed 72.3%, an atrocious development that gave this J.C. Chandor directorial effort a second weekend per-theater average of just $950, an embarrassing sum for a costly Marvel Comics adaptation. After so many release date delays and endless jokes about previous movies in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, there was never a prayer for “Kraven the Hunter” beating the odds at the box office.

Once audiences thoroughly rejected the title, not even a December launchpad could give it an okay second weekend hold. “Kraven the Hunter” utterly disintegrated just days into its theatrical run, which led to it grossing only $25 million in its North American release.

WarnerDiscovery CEO David Zaslav didn’t mince words when it came to bullishly promoting “The Flash” before its theatrical debut: Zaslav considered the Scarlet Speedster’s 2023 movie to be the pinnacle of the superhero film subgenre. Months before its debut, Warner Bros. was trying like crazy to drum up hype and anticipation over the inaugural live-action solo film for Barry Allen/The Flash (Ezra Miller). None of that was enough to get people into the theater and see the film, though. “The Flash” opened to a crummy $55 million, a terrible landing for something that cost over $200 million to make.

Any meager hopes within Warner Bros. that this title would turn things around in its second domestic frame quickly went up in smoke. “The Flash” fell 72.5% in its second weekend, a harsher decline than “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” despite “The Flash” bowing to less than a third of that 2016 film’s opening weekend. While other superhero films like “Spider-Man: No Way Home” inspired euphoric audience responses, immediate word-of-mouth around “The Flash” was dominated by mockery of its atrocious CGI and that one set piece involving a microwave and a deluge of babies.

With these damaging elements dominating the conversation, there was no way this film could ever recover from its dismal debut. No wonder “The Flash” sank like an especially heavy stone in its second weekend and failed to even double its debut frame in its lifetime domestic run.

Contrary to what “A Minecraft Movie” might have suggested, internet memes do not automatically make a movie successful. Countless times over the years, Hollywood has seen projects like “Snakes on a Plane” fail to translate rampant online jokes into tangible box office success. 2022’s vampire movie boondoggle, “Morbius,” despite inspiring some chuckles with the memes it spawned, was no box office success, and no amount of social media posts about “Mor-billion dollars” could change that reality. The first non-“Venom” film in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe opened to only $39 million domestically and proceeded to fall 73.8% in its second frame. 

“Morbius” joined some truly horrible rarified company with that decline. At the time of its release, only four other major studio releases that opened to over $30 million (“Fifty Shades of Grey,” “The Purge,” “The Devil Inside,” and the 2009 remake of “Friday the 13”) had worse second weekend drops. That hard truth spoke to how many audience members just didn’t care about any element of “Morbius.” It was too dreary and tedious to even become a bad movie that was delightful to make fun of, like “The Room.” 

This deeply cynical attempt to expand out the “Venom” universe got one of the worst CinemaScore grades of all time for a comic book movie from audiences. That in turn inspired word-of-mouth that rendered this second weekend capsizing inevitable. No internet meme could possibly have salvaged “Morbius” at the box office, even though it was made on a smaller $75 million budget.

It’s doubtful anyone ever had any hopes that the Shaquille O’Neal star vehicle “Steel” was going to break out at the box office. Shaq’s movies just weren’t massive moneymakers and the DC superhero that this feature was based on was a relatively new creation, having first debuted in the comics only four years before “Steel” made its August 1997 theatrical debut. There weren’t decades of anticipation to see this character in live-action like there was when Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” swung into multiplexes.

Warner Bros. clearly hedged its bets on the title from the start when it dropped “Steel” into just 1,260 theaters over its opening weekend. That was only a little more than 40% of the usual 2,800-3,200 locations occupied by typical 1997 wide releases. After opening to an embarrassing $870,068, “Steel” dropped 78% in its second weekend and grossed only $191,667. One of the biggest second weekend declines ever at that time, its brutal collapse was indicative of how much audiences had thoroughly rejected this project. “Steel” was totally ignored by the general public in favor of other summer 1997 comic book movies like “Men in Black” and “Spawn.” 

After its tremendous second weekend tumble, Warner Bros. stopped tracking the weekend hauls of this $16 million-budgeted superhero film. “Steel” finished its domestic run with only $1.7 million. Nobody had high pre-release expectations for this production, but nobody could have guessed “Steel” would melt down so mightily.

2025’s “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” is far from the first MCU movie to drop into a box office abyss in its second weekend of release. Even after the underwhelming numbers put up by “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” earlier in 2023, the dreary box office performance of “The Marvels” that same year was an embarrassment. It became the first MCU project to open below $50 million domestically with its anemic $46.1 million debut, while swiftly falling 78.1% to gross an abysmal $10.1 million in its sophomore frame. That was the 42nd-worst drop in history for a North American wide-release movie, with “The Marvels” having a worse hold than long-forgotten bombs like “The Apparition,” “From Justin to Kelly,” and “Mortal Engines.”

Everything that could go wrong for “The Marvels” went terribly awry, including a generic title that didn’t make it clear to general audiences that this was “Captain Marvel 2.” That second-weekend drop-off, though, was a vivid indicator that no salvation awaited this box office flop over the holiday season following its November 2023 release. A middling CinemaScore grade and immense competition from other tentpoles like “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” amplified its financial problems further after that disastrous bow. 

After scoring by far the worst second weekend hold ever for an MCU feature, “The Marvels” only reached $84.5 million in North America. Making only $38 million more after its opening was inevitable considering that steep second frame plummet. 

If there was any joke general audiences weren’t interested in hearing twice, it was the one about Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker existing in the real world as a seriously disturbed human being. That was despite “Joker: Folie a Deux” being a direct sequel to a leggy box office hit. The original 2019 “Joker” garnered enough controversy and buzz to turn it into a must-see film. Even after its massive opening weekend, it only dipped 42% in its second frame. In its first 10 weekends of release, it never once dropped more than 49% from one weekend to the next. “Joker” clearly struck a chord with audiences that kept it in the cultural conversation for months and months.

Doing a follow-up that brought in Lady Gaga as a grounded version of Harley Quinn sounded like a no-brainer recipe for box office glory. However, “Joker: Folie a Deux” was nothing short of a box office catastrophe. After crumbling to just $37.7 million over its opening weekend,  “Folie a Deux” fell 81.4% in its second frame to gross just $7 million. That paved the way for a $58.3 million domestic finish that didn’t come anywhere close to recouping the film’s gargantuan $200 million budget.

Such a massive fall was natural after director Todd Phillips’ film endured poisonous word-of-mouth, especially after befuddled viewers found out that it was actually a musical. The abysmal second weekend hold of “Joker: Folie a Deux” ensured that this misfire got played off the stage as quickly as possible.